Saratoga-based independent scholar, freelance writer and Adirondack historian Amy Godine met novelist Steve Stern over lunch at the late great Mother Goldsmith’s Restaurant on Phila Street in 1987. How their friendship has withstood the test of almost half a century of bad hair days, sick pet stories, and kvetch fests, is cause for wonder and alarm. She wrote The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier, coming in November from Cornell University Press.