Book excerpt: Abandoned Vermont: Down Forgotten Backroads brings readers on a journey down roads throughout Vermont where once loved homes and flourishing farms and businesses now sit empty, forgotten and untouched as nature starts to reclaim them. They sit still and quiet as life around these places passes them by. Underneath the caving roofs and behind the dirty and broken windows, these places hold memories and long to be remembered. Through the photographs in this book, Marie invites readers to get a glimpse of the beauty that can be found in the abandoned and discarded. Homes that are vacant and decaying still offer clues about the people who once lived their good and bad days behind the now crumbling walls. From the hardscrabble, rural towns where abandoned farms can be found at the crest of a dirt road to the small cities where these places are passed by daily, but never truly seen, these photographs tell pieces of their stories and will keep the memories of these places alive after they are gone.