UMaine News

Maine Folklife Center Releasing Muskrat Stew: The Life Story of Fred Ranco

Contact: Maine Folklife Center, 207-581-1891, or Tara Marvel, 603-428-3509

ORONO, Maine — The biography of Fred Ranco, a member of the Penobscot Nation on Indian Island near Old Town, Maine, will be released by the Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine and author Tara Marvel in February.

by Fred Ranco as told to Tara Marvel, is a slow-simmering brew of Penobscot life on and off the reservation that traces the life of a Native American through some of the major benchmarks of the 20th Century. From home on the reservation to boxing during the Depression, serving in World War II, running an Indian crafts shop in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and finally returning home to the reservation, Ranco’s journey memorializes a life through a tumultuous period.

“It’s the story of a survivor,” according to Marvel.

“One time I asked Fred what his favorite food was,” Marvel recalls. “He unhesitatingly replied ‘Muskrat Stew.’ This dish seems to be a kind of Penobscot soul food, something eaten in hard times, when there wasn’t much else to eat, but remembered fondly as a taste of the old days.”

Marvel met Ranco during the 40 years he lived in a cabin in Albany, N.H. For years he kept a shop where he sold carvings and other handicrafts. The unique memoir includes both folksy anecdotes and sometimes harsh realities. In addition to crafts, customs, animal and plant lore and family background, Ranco remembers his mother’s psychic abilities, family squabbles and Christmas on the Penobscot reservation. He tells about his adventures with a variety of jobs, his army experiences and selling crafts to tourists.

Marvel is a freelance writer, poet, illustrator and photographer. A former editor at the Lewiston, Maine Sun-Journal, she currently writes a column for Art Times Journal in New York. Among her recent works is “Moose Mind,” a video documentary following Ranco tracking though the Maine woods.

Ranco maintained his Maine guide hunting license well into his seventies. The full circle of Fred Ranco’s life is rounding to a close on the Old Town reservation.