Chicopee is not particularly renowned as a haven for the monstrous or the supernatural - with the possible exception perhaps of the King Kielbasa.
CHICOPEE - Ask Chicopee Public Library Director Nancy M. Contois if she has read anything by Stephen King lately and her response will likely be laughter.
That’s because much of the action in one of the short stories in King’s latest book, “Full Dark, No Stars,” takes place in Chicopee.
That might seem a stretch to some, given that Chicopee is not particularly renowned as a haven for the monstrous or the supernatural. With the possible exception perhaps of the King Kielbasa (no known relation to the author).
That eerily ever-expanding edible sausage, which graced the World Kielbasa Festival for 22 years, was last seen weighing in at an astonishing 623 pounds back in 1994.
Contois’s laughter, however. is for an even more personal reason. (mild spoiler to follow). One of the story’s nastiest villains is none other than the “head librarian” at the Chicopee Public Library.
“Isn’t that a hoot?” Contois said, laughing.
Rest assured, Contois is nothing like her fictional doppelganger, Ramona Norville, described by King as a “jovial woman of about 60 or so,” with a “Marine haircut and a take no prisoners handshake.”
“She is the salt of the earth, one of the sweetest persons you could ever meet,” Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette said of Contois.
In the story, the protagonist, an author named Tess, is invited to speak at the library’s book club. Tess, who lives in Connecticut, accepts and drives to Chicopee for the event.
Although her talk goes without a hitch, Tess’s trip to Western Massachusetts turns into a nightmare after the evil librarian recommends that she take a shortcut home that will allow her to avoid getting on Interstate 84.
That shortcut, which involves the intersection of the very real Route 47 and the seemingly made-up Stagg Road, leads Tess to an abandoned store. What happens next is not for the squeamish.
“We don’t even do that to people who bring their books back late,” joked Bissonnette.
It’s not the first time that a fictional character has come to trouble in Chicopee. Actor Joe Gannascoli’s character on “The Sopranos” got lost in the city during an episode of the hit HBO show back in 2006.
The Republican newspaper makes a brief cameo later in King’s piece when Tess goes online to find more about Norville and learns from a news story that her husband, a prominent Chicopee businessman, committed suicide.
Contois said she read the book after several library patrons mentioned the Chicopee connection.
“You have to be a Stephen King fan to get through the bad stuff,” she said.
Bissonnette called the Chicopee connection, “a curiosity more than anything,” and likened it to the time a few years back that Al’s Diner in Willmansett was featured in a “Zippy” comic strip.
Contois said she was relieved to see that with the exception of the route that Tess drives from Connecticut to her speaking engagement, just everything else about Chicopee and its library are pure fiction.
“I was relieved that it didn’t get too close too home,” Contois.
King has used Western Massachusetts as a venue for his fiction at least once before. In his 2001 novel, "Dreamcatcher," the fate of all mankind hangs in the balance right here at the Quabbin Reservoir when an alien attempts to poison the water supply with deadly spores.
King met with Quabbin officials and got a tour there while gathering material for that book.
It’s unlikely, however, that King visited the Chicopee Public Library before writing this particular story, which is titled “Big Driver,” Contois said “I bet my staff would have picked him out in a second,” she said.
Why Chicopee? Contois theorizes that King have been simply drawn by the somewhat unusual name. In his afterward, King said he got the inspiration for the setting while driving to an autograph session in Western Massachusetts in 2007.
“There’s nothing else you can do but appreciate his sense of humor,” Contois said. “He had to have known that there would be a librarian out there that would connected with this by the chosen location.”
Contois said that the library does invite authors to speak and that she would relish a visit from King.
“He could come, do a book talk and I could give him the wrong directions,” she said, laughing. Directions that could very well send King down Route 47 toward Stagg Road.