If you’re a millennial or older, you likely have some kind of relationship with radio. Maybe radio was ubiquitous in your own home and car for years before Spotify came along; maybe you just remember being a kid in the backseat hearing talk radio buzzing in the background; maybe you’re a regular listener to this day.

Personally, I trace my love of podcasts back to my parents’ having the radio tuned to the news much of the time. More recently, since I’ve moved to a city that has not one but two alternative rock music radio stations (KROQ and KYSR, aka Alt 98.7, to be exact), I’ve found myself listening in the car rather than choosing a playlist via my phone. I’m beginning to be familiar with the morning and afternoon hosts and have contemplated calling in when, say, Disney tickets are up for grabs. I even bought an actual radio for my home, a miniature replica of an old Victrola speaker.

Lest you think that radio is on its way out, the Pew Research Center found that in 2020, 83% of Americans over age 12 tuned in at least once a week. Whether you’re one of these listeners, or just have a nostalgic relationship to radio, you may find kindred spirits in “Talk Radio” by Maine writer Ham Martin, an endearing novel about a morning talk show on a local AM radio station in a small Maine village, the fictional Frost Pound.

It opens with Vivien Kindler, a woman recently separated from her husband Alan, idly listening to the radio in the house her ex left her to live in. It’s a well-appointed place on the water that we learn, eventually, is worth quite a lot of money, but Vivien is dissatisfied and lonely, her life rather empty, her possessions ringing hollow without close family, friends, a partner or a community.

When Fred Boyland, the morning show host, has a stroke soon after Vivien first tunes in, she decides on a whim to apply for the job and, perhaps because there are no other takers, the couple who runs the station hires her on the spot.

Frost Pound is the kind of place where people know one another. They know each other’s families and histories, who’s left and who’s come back, who drinks too much or has embarrassing hobbies, and they know, too, that Vivien is from away. At first, no one wants to talk to her about anything except where Fred Boyland went, whether he’s coming back, and why Vivien isn’t running the show like him. Fred used the news as a jumping off point for conversations; Vivien is more interested in telling her own stories as well as eliciting them from her callers, whom she gently coaxes into a kind of public intimacy.

Some people take to her anyway, such as the kindly retired English teacher who corrects Vivien’s pronunciation of the village name: “It’s Frost Pound – with an emphasis on the Frost. Say it like frost bite, or frog pond. Can you hear it? Not like Ezra Pound.”

Others, however, continue to hold her in contempt, such as a man named Old Sabe who regularly trolls Vivien with stories of freshwater lobsters. Some townspeople become regular callers, each with a moniker of their choosing: George the Welder (to distinguish him from the socialist George who sometimes calls in), JJ’s Mom (a grieving mother who now parents a dog named JJ), Brownie (a deliveryman who reads his original poetry on the air), the Piano Tuner (self-explanatory).

The book is told mostly through the dialogue on the radio, and Martin has a wonderful knack for differentiating the voices from one another. Vivien is an engaging main character, mostly because she’s a little idealistic and naïve, which lets her, for the most part, truly believe the best of people and find each of them worthy, no matter their implied politics or attitudes toward her.

When George the Welder, for instance, assures her that no one cares about why he never ended up going to college, she tells him: “Some don’t care, maybe even most don’t care – I don’t know. But some do, and everyone should. I care. It’s your story that you lived and know. Maybe your story can help people think through issues they’re dealing with right now.”

Where the book falters is in some of what occurs outside the radio station. The third-person narration that intrudes into the radio transcript is occasionally stilted and doesn’t always add much of substance, and there’s a flirtation between two of the regular callers that feels shoehorned into the book’s last quarter.

Still, these are minor flaws that are easily overlooked in service of the whole, which is a heartwarming and life-affirming depiction of how community can work – both on the air and off.

Ilana Masad is a book critic and fiction writer working on her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her debut novel, “All My Mother’s Lovers,” was published by Dutton in 2020.

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