I wonder what kind of national audience that author Jeff Benedict will find for his new book, “Little Pink House,” a narrative account of New London's eminent domain saga, the story of how the battle for Fort Trumbull ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The news accounts at the time certainly captured the country's attention, and the final decision in Kelo v. New London, which went against Susette Kelo and her neighbors, fueled a national debate and wave of eminent domain reform.

But I doubt the book will have the kind of appeal anywhere else that it might have here, where we already know the story and the cast of characters so well. It's a delight to read the way Benedict has strung it all together, like flipping nostalgically through an old yearbook.

There's Claire Gaudiani, former president of Connecticut College and the lead villain in the book, as head of the home-stealing New London Development Corp.. She first sails into the public eye in a front-page picture in The Day, the book says, shown dancing without her shoes in a sleeveless red dress, part of the “steady sexual innuendo” she uses to get her way.

”She was the closest thing New London had to a diva,” Benedict writes in introducing Gaudiani to the story.

Tony Basilica, chairman of the city's Democratic Town Committee, is “husky and balding with dark eyes,” and he has the “looks and vocabulary of Tony Soprano.”

Hearing that Gaudiani might head up a revived NLDC, a tough-talking Basilica is quoted saying: “Tell her to stick to French literature, or whatever the hell she teaches.”

Lobbyist Jay Levin is portrayed as a greedy opportunist who “made a living off his Rolodex,” someone who was paid almost $300,000 for his part in a project that cost so many people their homes.

We find William Von Winkle, one of the Fort Trumbull property owners, diving in the NLDC Dumpster in the middle of the night, collecting incriminating documents from the trash. At his Fort Trumbull deli, the playful Von Winkle offers up Adm. Goebbels Goulash, “served ice cold in a jack-boot” in a not-so-flattering nod to Adm. David Goebel, who ran the NLDC under Gaudiani.

City Attorney Thomas Londregan relies steadfastly through the book on his belief in the city's lawful use of eminent domain to promote redevelopment in a land-poor city, despite a rising wave of public opinion against it.

Even Londregan's mother, nostalgic about her family's own historic ties to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, tells her son he shouldn't win the case, Benedict reports.

And of course there are heroes, like the scrappy and wise community activist Kathleen Mitchell, who helps Kelo buck up under the increasing pressure of the national spotlight and pitches in wherever needed, even if that means getting arrested while standing in the way of a house wrecking machine.

In Mitchell, in fact, you can see the arc of the story in the book, from the sniping comments she makes about Gaudiani, as the community first begins fuming over the NLDC's high-handed tactics, to a moment of pity that overwhelms her as she watches her nemesis struggle through testimony in a court hearing.

By then Gaudiani had been forced from the college presidency by disgruntled faculty and students and the Fort Trumbull project was already in a ditch.

”For three years ... Mitchell (had been) trying to bloody that face with relentless assault through words, slogans and protests,” Benedict writes. “Through it all she had seen Claire one way: as a cold, calculating power broker. But suddenly, Claire was in an inferior position. Instead of being in charge she had been forced into a defensive posture, like a pampered house pet being dropped suddenly into a jungle.”

Benedict, too, appears to have a soft spot for some of Gaudiani's charms, and indeed the opening chapters rely chiefly on her own account of how she claims to have wooed over Pfizer research head George Milne, convincing him to build a new facility on the city's waterfront.

”Claire planned to make the most of her one-on-one audience with the man ultimately in charge of site selection of Pfizer's new home,” Benedict reports, sticking closely to Gaudiani's self-serving version of events. “She figured that luring Pfizer to a contaminated brownfield was a pipe dream, but she had to ask.”

Isn't it more likely that Pfizer's interest in the New London waterfront led to the creation of the NLDC and Gaudiani's appointment as its first president? Telling that story might have offered more of the “whole truth” of the story than “Little Pink House” promises on its dust jacket.

Benedict's book doesn't offer a lot of groundbreaking reporting, but it is an engaging and entertaining retelling of the story that made New London the national poster child for eminent domain abuse.

It also comes at a curious time, an already nostalgic look at a very different period in the city's not-so-distant past, when Pfizer was still expanding, yearning to create a “virtual Pfizer University” on the Fort Trumbull peninsula, instead of firing research scientists and retrenching.

In some ways, they were the good old days.

THIS IS THE OPINION OF DAVID COLLINS.

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