Our state Vermont charms with untouched beauty. Come for the leaves, come for the snow, come for the lakes and rivers. Find a comfy chair, a local mash (or stomp), a good book, and breathe our fresh air. That is our brand. One fiery red/orange leaf of the sweet maple is enough to say “Vermont.” Yet, Vermont is also a hunting ground for the unscrupulous.
For northern Vermont, just cast your memory on Jay Peak. For southern Vermont, a similar story was told in Dover and Wilmington with Haystack Mountain. I.M. Aiken, author of The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County, has turned her wit and deep knowledge of the system to create a fictional version of ski-area-fraudsters, along with politicians, lawyers, and business folks who get pulled along with the fantasy of getting rich by tarting up a lovely hill so that wealthy folks from away would find a home in it. They’d spend their money here. They’d hire people who need jobs. They’d restart flagging economies. One need not ask the obvious question: What could possibly go awry?
In her second novel, the forthcoming Stolen Mountain, Aiken nibbles away at our assumptions, and has a bit of fun along the way. Why not? Why not use modern, everyday Vermonters to explore this sticky world? In The Little Ambulance War, Aiken create Brighid and her spouse Major Sarah Anne Musgrave (Sam)—a seasoned combat soldier and intelligence officer—of the US Army as secondary characters. In Stolen Mountain, Brighid, an EMT and captain of a small-town Vermont rescue squad, turns narrator and sleuth, leading us through an adventure. In addition to being a classic legal thriller, Stolen Mountain boasts a tender love story, which is punctuated by Sam’s absence when she deploys.
After a 200-plus-year history of military service of all manor and flavors, women were only recently permitted to serve in combat positions. Notoriously, during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, women used “male” names, outfitting themselves as gents for the privilege of entering battle. Flash forward to 1988, where women were officially banned from combat with implementation of the DOD’s “Risk Rule,” rescinded in 1994, paving the way for more gender-neutral policy, if not practice, both of which are subject to change. Aiken draws on her experience as a civilian member of US Army’s 4th Infantry Division to explore Sam and the impact of her service on her own life and Brighid’s. Meanwhile, Sam brings her special brand of toughness and mischief to aid Brighid’s investigation, putting herself, as per usual, in certain danger.
The novel releases in early September 2025 and will be available through any bookshop, and as an audiobook read by Aiken herself, which is a treat not-to-be missed. The bookstores would love to get your pre-orders https://a.co/d/1Nwti86—so would the author and her publisher.
Between novels, Aiken is pushing boundaries with a series of poignant, darkly hilarious, and infinitely honest short stories, also set mostly in Vermont. You can follow her at https://trowbridgeDispatch.iamaiken.com.
I.M. Aiken worked on ambulances off and on since the 1980s, starting in the Boston area where she was born and raised. She is the author of The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County, a Trowbridge Vermont Novel, and served one tour in Iraq as a civilian member of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division. I. M. Aiken now lives in Vermont.
