Yesterday, I did something I have never done before: I grated hard-cooked eggs for a salad. I was at my friend Margy’s house, and I was helping her get ready for a birthday supper for Mary, a mutual friend.

“What can I do to help?” I asked when I first arrived.

“Here,” she said, handing me a bowl of hard-cooked eggs with the shells on. “Peel those eggs and grate them for the salad.”

As I began peeling the eggs, I confessed. “I want you to know, Margy, that I have never grated eggs before.”

“What?” Margy asked, as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “We do it all the time for salads and sandwiches.”

Just then our friend Paula came in, bearing a beautiful strawberry-rhubarb cobbler. “Have you ever grated eggs?” I asked her.

“Never,” she said. “I always cut them up with a fork.”

Another friend, Patrice, joined us. “What about you?” I asked. “Have you ever grated eggs?”

“Nope,” she answered. “I use a fork.”

“See?” I said to Margy.

Mary, the birthday girl, was the dissenting voice. “We always used a mouli, so that’s something like grating.”

After grating those eggs, I had to admit that they looked pretty darned good, as my husband, Clif, might say. And they sprinkled beautifully on the big salad Margy made using Farmer Kev’s fresh greens.

At a round wood table, we ate supper in Margy’s summer dining room. The fans were on, making the room pleasantly cool on a very hot day. We had salad (with grated eggs), bread, and cheese. We sang happy birthday to Mary.  I brought an ice cream pie, which meant we had 2 desserts, which tickled us all. Paula’s delectable cobbler had a light, scone-like topping, and the strawberry-rhubarb was the right balance of tart and sweet.

After that, it was off to Bailey Library to hear Monica Wood talk about her most recent book, When We Were the Kennedys, a memoir about growing up in Mexico, Maine, and the terrible loss her family suffered in 1963. She read excerpts from the book, and she explained how it took her a while to find the right voice for the story. Initially, she wrote it in a cool, journalistic style, but when her sister noted that the book was a little flat, Monica decided to use elements—such as dialogue—normally used in fiction. Creative nonfiction I believe this is called, and Monica made a good decision. I read When We Were the Kennedys last year, and I have it starred in the little journal I use to note books I’ve read. This warm and humane yet shrewd book is not only beautifully written, but it also captures a time and a place—a mill town in Maine in the 1960s—the positive and the negative.

I, too, come from a mill town in Maine—Waterville—and my father was born in Mexico, Maine. Monica’s descriptions could be my descriptions, right down to the dark, dirty polluted river—the Androscoggin in her case and the Kennebec in mine.

When We Were the Kennedys is selling very well and is gathering a lot of praise. And deservedly so. It always so gratifying when a moving, well-written book gets the attention it deserves. Readers, if you haven’t read this book, put it on your TBR pile. Put it at the top.

So last night we went from the slightly silly—grated eggs—to the sublime—When We Were the Kennedys.

A day in the life of a small town.