Good lord. I felt so many emotions while reading this book, and I am realizing that for the most part, I felt sad. I feel sad that a bunch of yahoos (that is my polite word for them) came into a town called Grafton and decided here we will make a libertarian paradise and just utterly wrecked the place. To the point that at times it felt like the bears were not the worst part of the whole ordeal. I think what makes me most sad though is that the realization that people try these pie in the sky utopias, but they stop working the first time someone says they don’t agree with you. I felt a frisson of fear as Hongoltz-Hetling brings up the fact some of these people are currently in office and are pushing for a secession movement in the state of New Hampshire. I also felt some anger too though because this town in probably a year, maybe two or three is going to just be eaten back up by the very forest that the settlers removed to set up homes. It feels like the town of Grafton was poisoned from the start of too many men and women who didn’t want to pay taxes and or give up their so called “freedoms.”