Episode 13: Quarter-Acre of Heartache & Other Claude Clayton Smith Books: Author Talk

March 14, 2026

Librarian Adam sits down with Claude Clayton Smith, an author who writes about the Paugussetts, the tribe whose ancestral lands include Bridgeport. We discuss three of his books: The Stratford Devil, his novel featuring settlers and Indigenous people around colonial Stratford; The Quarter-Acre of Heartache, following Chief Big Eagle’s efforts to keep the Paugussett reservation in tribal hands; and Red Men in Red Square, in which Smith and Chief Big Eagle travel to visit Indianists, enthusiasts of Indigenous People in Russia in the early 1990s.