In 1979, Jimmy Carter was president, Mainer Joan Benoit Samuelson won the women’s division of the Boston Marathon, and Michael Jackson dropped his breakthrough album, “Off the Wall.”  And that’s when Mel Allen began his nearly 50-year association with Yankee Magazine, where he served as editor for many years until retiring earlier this year. (He started his writing life in 1975, as a freelancer for the Portland Press Herald.)

Yankee Magazine describes itself as “New England’s storyteller.” As a writer and then editor, Allen was storyteller-in-chief, and his valedictory collection of Yankee stories, “Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places and Memories That Connect Us All,” offers readers a decades-long collection of regional narrative snapshots. 

The book is made up of 45 stories divided into seven thematic chapters. Collectively, they portray New Englanders as hardworking, determined, able to overcome challenges and willing to help others. 

One entry, “The Man Who Writes Nightmares,” recounts Stephen King’s early career — well before he became a global superstar.  King’s early writings were repeatedly rejected by publishers. “There were so many times I thought I was pursuing a pipe dream,” he told Allen. Exhibiting the same traits as others in the collection, King persevered.

In a chapter titled “Hard to Forget,” Allen reports on the heroic attempt to diagnose and treat a Massachusetts man suffering from mysterious, life-threatening symptoms, and the man’s mighty attempt to live.  

When he was teaching fourth grade in Gorham, Allen met a daredevil bush pilot, whom he later wrote about. “My zeal replaces judgment,” the pilot, an unabashed risk-taker, admitted. “But then I love zeal.”  

In another essay, he writes of the tragic disappearance of a 4-year-old boy in Chain of Ponds in Franklin County and the unrelenting efforts of 1,500 searchers to find the child (they never did).  He also describes the beautiful work of the Apple Hill Chamber players in New Hampshire, who use music as a way of bringing people together.

In Massachusetts, Billy Starr responded to the deaths of his parents just three months apart by taking up long-distance bicycle riding. He turned his passion into the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) fundraiser for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which has raised over $1 billion for cancer research. “When they write the history of how cancer was conquered, the PMC will be in chapter one,” the president of Dana-Farber said, commenting on the achievement.

This book is replete with stories of courage and resilience in the face of sometimes unfathomable challenges. Larry Joel was among the first medics deployed to Vietnam in 1965. Ambushed and nearly overrun by Viet Cong on one of his first patrols, Larry ran through the line of fire to aid wounded soldiers. He was hit by machine gun fire but carried on, treating the wounded and shouting words of encouragement, even as he was hit a second time. His valor was rewarded with the Medal of Honor, making him the first black soldier to receive the medal while still living.  

Allen met with Larry in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the early 1980s. Larry was plagued with health problems, his marriage had fallen apart and, after working to counsel veterans for years in Hartford, he was denied when he applied for VA disability benefits. In spite of his many challenges, “I tell myself it’s going to be better,” Larry told Allen. “I don’t let myself stay down. I saved a lot of people’s lives once. Now I’ve got to help myself.”

Jane Smith lost her husband and 13-year old daughter, Samantha Smith, in 1985, when their Bar Harbor Airlines plane crashed on a rainy, foggy night near the Auburn-Lewiston airport.  Samantha had gained worldwide fame for writing to Yuri Andropov, then General Secretary of the Communist Party, asking whether the Soviet Union wanted peace with the United States. She received a personal response from Andropov and an invitation to visit Moscow; she accepted and with her parents spent two weeks in the Soviet Union.    

In “Life After Samantha,” Allen describes how Jane Smith knew she would survive the loss, but “I just didn’t know how.

“I still cry,” Jane Smith told Allen, but “it’s not something you can do anything about except go on….”  A  statue of Samantha near the State House in Augusta depicts the teenager in shirtsleeves. Whenever Jane Smith passes by the statue in winter, she wishes her daughter were dressed more warmly. “She can’t be out there with shirtsleeves,” she finds herself thinking.

Allen’s New England stories have an irresistible gravitational pull, drawing the reader in as they learn about the region’s people, their histories, their achievements and triumphs. Allen writes that these “miniature pictures of New England … reveal a larger life around them.” This is a collection for New Englanders, for visitors and for all those who’ve left but long to return.

Dave Canarie is an attorney and faculty member at University of Southern Maine.