In 1991, Crash Barry moved to Maine's most remote inhabited island to work as a sternman aboard a lobster boat. On Matinicus, twenty miles out to sea, population fifty, the ferry visited nine times a year and airplanes only landed when there was no fog, rain, snow, sleet or darkness.
Using in-depth records from his family's hunting journal, including photographs and letters dating back to the 1800s and a detailed camp register from 1936 to the present, Ghost Buck draws on the long history of noted environmentalist and hunter, Dean Bennett's extended family, beginning with his beloved grandfather, and tells of the changes that have affected hunting and the landscape in weste
- Journey into America's past with this warm, personal account of living in a historic New England Georgian home and the family who owned it for over 200 years- Rich local and national history of 18th-century America and depictions of daily life- Includes 25 adapted historic recipes, county records, inventories, a military diary, and details on 18th-century cooking ingredients, fabric, paint, and
Lavender, basil, hyssop, balm, sage, rue - the thinking gardener's guide to herbs.
Maine summers of the 1950s and '60s, seen through the experiences of a young boy skilled in sailing Casco Bay. This collection of vignettes and adventures brings the insights of growing awareness with the discovery of coastal communities and their often challenging shoreline.
Anyone visiting the innumerable islands that hug the coast of Maine has wondered what it would be like to live year round on a “rock” bounded by the sea, essentially cut off from the world, with life’s priorities whittled down to the most basic necessities.
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Set mid-to-late 20th century (with the heart of the book set in the 1950s and '60s), MY FATHER'S EYES is a loving daughter's memoir of a family coming to terms with a legacy of blindness, and a father's heroic efforts to secure independence and dignity.
DEV'S LOVE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES
Veterinarian Brad Brown never knew what to expect when he was called.
Whether he was trying to geld a spooked stallion in a blizzard or found himself in the middle of an all-out fracas involving a monkey’s abscessed tooth and a shotgun, he took it in stride, with great affection for both his four-legged patients and his two-legged clients.
Brad Brown is back with a second set of stories just as entertaining and fascinating as his first book.
Since his boyhood days watching test pilots roar through the sky over his Long Island, NY, home, Robert Bryan was fascinated with flight. Add to that his love of a good story and his vocation as an Episcopal priest and you have the three great themes of his life.
Bustins lies in a quiet corner of inner Casco Bay, just a mile or two offshore from the hustle and bustle of the tourist mecca of Freeport, yet most people know little, if anything, about it. Bustins features more than one hundred homes, some more than a century old, and boasts its own ferry service. Still, it has no electricity, no businesses, and almost no vehicles.
Over four seasons, he describes Maine half a century ago - smelting and rescuing ice houses, moose encounters and indoor ermine, raising mischievous rabbits and conversing with pigs, hunting a legendary "football-sized emerald" and learning from legendary World War II vets.
Stories of natural and personal discovery in Maine's North woods. There's no nature deficiency in these pages - the author's passion for the Maine Woods is revealed through poetic observation and descriptions of Maine's most historic and beautiful landscapes. Insightful and entertaining. Brings the Maine woods into your living room.
Inspired by her new home in New England and the slow food movement re-energizing sustainable farming, Kate Christensen picks up where she left off in her last memoir, Blue Plate Special. In an ode to How to Cook a Wolf, M.F.K.
Writer and editor Edie Clark was not expecting love to enter her life in the form of a young carpenter named Paul Bolton. She was facing the realities of a failing marriage, while Paul was a shy, gentle but sometimes troubled man. Yet together they nurtured a love and built a married life as beautiful and enduring as the places Paul restored, the cabinets he crafted.
Twenty-six feisty and determined women, 50s through 80s, share their compelling stories with grit and humor. Donating a kidney to a stranger, building schools in Ethiopia, racing around a Roller Derby track ... they triumph over fears, find fulfillment, and offer advice. Helpful risk-taking tools and stimulating discussion questions are also featured.
Choices are hard. Melissa "chose" the conventional life in the way most people choose a conventional life; it seemed to simply happen to her. So, she chose to be a "happily" married mother and nurse, living a quiet, simple life. A good life. The kind of life her mother lived, and her mother before her. Until she couldn't bear it anymore. A colicky baby. Postpartum depression.
Brad Cook, as a deeply troubled young man, had a chance encounter with a stranger, who shared his intriguing story around the campfire one evening in the summer of 1975. The seed of a dream was planted, which turned out to be the spark Brad needed to initiate a complete physical, mental, and spiritual transformation, a quest for more.
Settling Twice began in a place of grief. Deborah Joy Corey had lost her father and mother six years apart, and although she had been running from their absence, she knew the dark hole of it was catching her. There was nothing else to do, but to stop. She rented a place where she could be alone, and there her grief encompassed her like a black cloud that rolls in off the sea.
Tim Cotton has been a police officer for more than thirty years. The writer in him has always been drawn to the stories of the people he has met along the way.
This book of personal essays addresses experiences that--though often laced with emotional pain--led the author to deep gratitude. Hence the book's title: Strenuous Blessings. Written in a direct, penetrating, singularly readable style, the stories focus on challenges such as infertility, step mothering, and serious childhood illness.
May and Jim Davidson spent sixty-eight years together sharing an unbreakable love of Maine and a relentless drive to do "whatever it takes" to find success and happiness. After falling in love as teenagers, they built their first house using twenty dollars worth of lumber and optimistically started creating the life of their dreams.
Joshua Chamberlain is arguably the most well-known figure in Maine history and this highly accessible biography provides a brief look at his life. Covering his early years to his time as a student at Bowdoin, the primary emphasis in on Chamberlain's military career and his heroic actions during the Civil War, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Papa and his son Richard have little time left to reconcile their differences. Placed in a nursing home against his will, 88-year-old Papa is angry and confused. Richard is angry too, angry with Papa.
A lifelong dream comes true as the author builds his cabin in the Maine woods surrounded by wildlife and excellent fishing.
This is the comprehensive biography of Reverend Seth Noble-famous preacher, patriot and pioneer founding father. With the discovery and transcription of one of Rev. Seth Noble's earliest sermons (1774), we find that he believed the American Revolution to be God's plan to bring a global reformation to the world. He firmly believed that America was God's true Promised Land.
A story of friendship, encouragement, and the quest to design a better world
A Man Apart is the story--part family memoir and part biography--of Peter Forbes and Helen Whybrow's longtime friendship with Bill Coperthwaite (A Handmade Life), whose unusual life and fierce ideals helped them examine and understand their own.
Follow along as I retrace the steps of my life's journey while fulfilling that dream of so long ago, my story of pursuing and "Living the Dream" as a State of Maine Game Warden. Meet the many characters and enjoy some of the crazy antics that I had the opportunity to deal with over the 20 years of my great career, including many of the wild animals that I loved being around.
John Ford Sr. returns to the outdoors of Maine with This Cider Still Tastes Funny Further Adventures of a Game Warden in Maine, his follow-up to the highly popular and critically acclaimed Suddenly, the Cider Didn't Taste So Good. Ford is a retired Maine game warden, sheriff, and gifted storyteller who carved out a reputation as a man of the law, but one who wasn't a by-the-book enforcer.
Retired Maine Game Warden John Ford has seen it all. He's been shot at by desperate prison escapees, been outwitted by wily trappers, and rescued scores of animals. As a tenacious and successful warden, he was always willing to spend the time needed to nab violators of the state's fish and game laws.
John Ford, retired Maine game warden, returns with book 3 of tales from his long career as a game warden in Maine. Each of them are filled with actual events and experiences, written as short stories, mostly humorous in nature, of the many great experiences the young game warden remembered the most.
In this new collection, Maine guide, bush pilot, journalist, and professional photographer Paul Fournier spins more stories of the wild outdoors in the inimitable style that earned him the Best Book of 2011 Award from the New England Outdoor Writers Association for Tales from Misery Ridge.
Paul Fournier lived and breathed Maine's Great North Woods for decades, from his summers working at a boys' camp as a teenager, to his adventures as a registered Maine Guide, bush pilot, and sporting camp owner, to his career with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
"What is it like to live on an island?"
Located off the southwest coast of Mount Desert Island in Maine, Gotts Island, a mile across and three miles round, is ringed with bright granite--a "rock bound belt" that suggests concreteness, independence, and separation from the sea around it. But no island, no place, ever stands alone and unchanging.
This timeless and iconic Maine tale is the true story of the unique human-animal friendship between Harry Goodridge and Andre, the harbor seal who was as comfortable in Goodridge's home as he was in Penobscot Bay.
There used to be a time when marvelous skyrockets could be purchased for a dime and the iceman came around once a week, when throwing a cap on and off took special talent and pants had watch pockets. When John Gould was young it didn' take much to amuse a boy. A boy would wake up in the morning ready to be "amazed all day long at all manner of things."
As John Gould and his wife tour through Germany, Denmark, Austria, Italy, France, England, and Scotland, you'll discover what a delight it is to travel Gould family style, for that is Maine style with the extra sparkle of Gould's wry Down East humor.
Written with a delightful sense of irony and a profound tenderness, The Education of a Yankee is an engaging memoir that skillfully reveals the grand, eccentric, and occasionally tragic history of a very unconventional family.
A life well-lived in rural New England, through the eyes of a master essayist and poet. This collection includes Donald Hall's Seasons at Eagle Pond, Here at Eagle Pond, the poem "Daylilies on the Hill," and many uncollected pieces.
In this critically acclaimed Maine classic, first published in 1945, Helen Hamlin writes of her adventures teaching school at a remote Maine lumber camp and then of living deep in the Maine wilderness with her game warden husband. Her experiences are a must-read for anyone who loves the untamed nature and wondrous beauty of Maine's north woods and the unique spirit of those who lived there.
“WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE?” the old jewelry maker asked. Moments later, Kevin found himself alone again by the red wooden sign depicting the massacre that occurred here so long ago.
Shoutin' Into the Fog is a gritty Depression-era memoir of life in Midcoast Maine. Author Thomas Hanna, a longtime resident of Bath, grew up in the village of Five Islands on Georgetown Island, in a small, crowded bungalow pieced together on the edge of a swamp with secondhand wood and cardboard.
There is nothing that outdoors columnist John Holyoke loves more than a good story. In his first book, Evergreens, Holyoke shares a curated collection of his favorite essays featuring people who are passionate about the outdoors, as well as his memorable encounters with creatures--from salmon to deer to moose to squirrels--that fascinate and confound him.
Recounts the author's North Woods experiences during the 1930s when she, her husband, and their children lived in a small cabin on the shore of Umsaskis Lake.
Maine's Remarkable Women tells the stories of fifteen strong and determined women who broke through social, cultural, or political barriers. Through their passions for art, exploration, literature, politics, music, and nature, these women made contributions to society that still resonate today.
On October 2nd, 2010, while walking to the mailbox with a cup of coffee in one hand and a letter in the other, I was hit by a vehicle in a crosswalk. Mind, body, and spirit were forever shattered. Years of doctors, procedures, and at its zenith, 14 different medications that at times separated me from reality in every sense of the word.
Along the coast of Maine, fame and fortune abound; the town of Owls Head has little of either. Its people occupy a gorgeous peninsula in Penobscot Bay but have raised only two-and-a-half tourist attractions. The businesses in town with multiple employees are the general store and two lobster wholesalers.
Rarely will you find books that explore the human emotions of a long-distance trek so honestly and clearly. --Roger Williamson, Campmor, Inc.
"Highly recommended." --trailsbib.blogspot.com
Rarely will you find books that explore the human emotions of a long-distance trek so honestly and clearly. --Roger Williamson, Campmor, Inc. "Highly recommended." --trailsbib.blogspot.com From the book: "We stood for a moment before the venerable signpost marking the summit.
The Walls Within is the real-life memoir of Vietnam veteran Graydon "Cub" Lewis. Cub's real-world experience as a combat veteran laid a solid foundation for a lifetime of struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The telling of his story of true resilience is raw, emotional, and often tough to read.
A music agent's coast-to-coast coming of age from the 1960s to the 1980s when rock music was a movement. Hosting Liberace in a summer tent theatre, bailing Jim Morrison out of jail . . . are only a few of Loren's often surreal, rite-of-passage experiences in the music business.
Join Charles Ero Masalin as he recounts his adventures in entrepreneurship; a life from lobster fisherman and farm hand to Naval Officer and many business ventures along the way.
Women of the Dawn tells the stories of four remarkable Wabanaki Indian women who lived in northeast America during the four centuries that devastated their traditional world.
Robert McCloskey was author of such famous children's books as Make Way for Ducklings, One Morning in Maine, and Time of Wonder, but little is known of his life. This memoir by his daughter Jane reveals the reclusive artist that few really knew, including his Midwestern upbringing, the pivotal event in Mexico that shaped his life, and the family's years on their island in Maine.
Sing to Me and I Will Hear You - The Love Story opens when a nun and a priest, each newly assigned to the same parish school in Waterville, Maine, in September, 1968, are introduced to one another.
FLAT ASS CALM
Black and White Edition
When author Amy M. McMullen was young, she wasn't preoccupied with dolls, dresses, or boys like other little girls; instead she was fixated on a Maine island called Monhegan.
Redeeming Ruth is the inspirational, true story of an abandoned baby, a devastating diagnosis, and the way God loves broken, hurting people through us--even though we may be broken and hurt, too.
"A revelation. No one will ever view Andrew Wyeth's apparently tranquil works the same way again after reading this vivid and astonishing portrait of the turbulent, driven man who paints them. Richard Meryman has written a wonderful book."
Imagine a 7-year-old boy asking his father if they can hike the entire length of the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail together. Then imagine that the father says yes. Now think "What are they getting themselves into?"
David Morine's long love affair with Maine began when he was a boy in 1946 and his parents rented their first lakeside cabin in Fryeburg. At first skeptical about the cost and the lack of plumbing or electricity, the Morines quickly felt right at home. There was plenty of good fishing and good company to fill the long summer days.
What's it like to live on an island twenty-two miles out to sea? Where there are only three dozen winter residents? Where the local economy is lobstering? Period. Where your most reliable source of transportation off the island may be a small Cessna and the airstrip is dirt (or snow or mud)? Where, if the forecaster says the storm is headed safely out to sea, you know it's coming your way?
On six remote, windblown Maine islands, the children are still educated in one-room schools. After two mainland one-room schools closed in 2009, these islands maintain the last taxpayer-funded public one-room elementary schools in the state. But despite very small student populations and sometimes shrinking communities, these remaining schools are not slated to close.
Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life and many other bestselling books, lived together for 53 years until Scott's death at age 100. Loving and Leaving the Good Life is Helen's testimonial to their life together and to what they stood for: self-sufficiency, generosity, social justice, and peace.
This one volume edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings these classics on rural homesteading together. This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.
In Mark Nickerson's second book, Behind the Blue Lights, in addition to his usual hilarious stories of life as a Maine State Trooper, Mark delves deeper into the reasons people become law enforcement officers, and offers some poignant insight into the difficulties of life behind the blue lights.
Who are these new Mainers, and why have they come here? They are from war-torn countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Cambodia; from poor Latin American nations; and from economically vibrant places like Hong Kong, India, and Europe—in other words, from across the global spectrum.
Northern Maine retains qualities of life that many people long for in today's world. The pace can be slower, nature is close, the beauty is breathtaking, and the people are authentic. Kathryn Olmstead, a transplant from Michigan more than forty decades ago, considers it a place mysterious to those who have not been there and unforgettable to those who have.
The first biography of the writer/naturalist, and one of the leading founders of the modern environmental movement, Henry Beston.
For more than ten years, Elizabeth Peavey has been traveling around the state of Maine, and writing about her wide-ranging experiences and discoveries in Down East magazine. This book collects her very best columns and essays. In a light and entertaining style laced with lots of entertaining humor, she weaves a wide-ranging tapestry that will give readers a vivid and fresh view of the state.
In this bittersweet memoir of two decades of dairy farming, Trudy Chambers Price writes of the daily trials of haying, cow breeding, and milking against a backdrop of gentle and entertaining rural life. The work was never-ending and exhausting, but also exhilarating and rewarding. She introduces kind neighbors, eccentric neighbors, visiting city folk, and loveable pets.
"We had much rather be all alone in the right than with the whole world in the wrong." So wrote Jeremiah Hacker in 1862. He was the main writer and editor of The Pleasure Boat, which may have the distinction of being Portland, Maine's most controversial newspaper.
Joshua Chamberlain was much more than a war hero, and Pullen's thoughtful book fills out the picture of his remarkable life. An entertaining and inspiring story.--Senator George J. Mitchell"Pullen's book is a worthy tribute to Chamberlain's lasting legacy."--Charles F.
This book is a kaleidoscope of unique perspectives in viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, finger-smudged lenses, and every vantage point in between. This broad spectrum of words and thoughts expressed within these pages is as vast as the people, observations, and situations that have inspired them.
In Backtrack, former naval officer, avid outdoorsman, sportsman, editor, and award-winning journalist V. Paul Reynolds journeys back along the path of his life to revisit and share with readers many of his outdoor experiences. Reynolds was introduced to the outdoors by his father, Harvard Reynolds, in the 1940s.
In her early thirties, Louise Dickinson Rich took to the woods of Maine with her husband. They found their livelihood and raised a family in the remote backcountry settlement of Middle Dam, in the Rangeley area. Rich made time after morning chores to write about their lives.
This book gives an eye--opening account of the day--to--day reality of a fieldworker in the African bush and the trials and triumphs of work with an international aid organization.
A moving memoir of a famed American family scion, including his love story with a famed American children's writer and global adventures in love, loss, and fortune.
From its earliest beginnings, the land that became Maine produced adventurous inhabitants who went outside its boundaries to do interesting things that sometimes made them famous or even infamous.
Populated by an oddball cast of characters, this book chronicles one man's determined effort--occasionally with hilarious results--to follow the stream that runs by his house to its elusive source.
Into Woods is an exuberant, profound, and often wonderfully funny account of ten years in the life of author Bill Roorbach. A paean to nature, love, family, and place, it begins with his honeymoon on a wine farm in France's Loire Valley and closes with the birth of his daughter and he and his wife's return to their beloved Maine.
In this, her bestselling journal, May Sarton writes with keen observation and emotional courage of both inner and outer worlds: a garden, the seasons, daily life in New Hampshire, books, people, ideas—and throughout everything, her spiritual and artistic journey.
Working the Sea is the story of a Maine fisherman’s life, a collection of memories and teachings from a master storyteller.
GOT HERE AS SOON AS I COULD is a collection of syndicated columnist Sarah Smiley's
most-loved columns about raising a family in Maine. In these 100 essays, readers will laugh, cry
and nod their head "yes" as they remember a time when all of America was as simple and
beautiful as it still is today in Vacationland.
Ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to deeply poignant, this collection of essays from one of Maine's favorite outdoor writers explores the way life should be, could be, and sometimes is in the great state of Maine.
After a lifetime of hunting and fishing, and a career advocating for wildlife, hunters, and anglers, including 18 years at the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, 13 years as a TV show host, and 40 years as an outdoor writer, George Smith is ready to share his very best stories with you - with lots of Maine adventures (including hunting with his Dad Ezra Smith for 53 years) and others from Montana t
Glenna Johnson Smith writes with eloquence and humor about the complexities, absurdities, and pleasures of the everyday, from her nostalgic looks at her childhood on the Maine coast in the 1920s and 1930s, to her observations of life under the big sky and among the rolling potato fields of her beloved Aroostook County, where she has lived for nearly seven decades.
The Old Maine Woman returns with her customary combination of sass, insight, and nostalgia in a host of new essays that shed their own particular light on the quandaries of being female, growing up, getting married, and getting older as a woman in the northern parts of the state.
Master Maine Guide Randy Spencer knows the lakes, streams, and woodlands around Grand Lake Stream, Maine, like few others. He has learned the ways of the old Maine Guides-from the proper way to prepare shore lunches, to where to find the best salmon and bass, to how to survive in the wilderness-from some of the area's local legends.
What Walter Staples had intended was for this book to be a compilation of unusual circumstances, anecdotes, and stories from his personal experience during a period of twenty years of managing a relatively small blueberry farm.
A collection of true stories told by Robert Stevens to his daughter, Catherine, about his life growing up in Surry, Maine, during the 1940's and '50's. Reviews from readers: "Thank you for your candid honesty that left me at times laughing out loud and others wiping tears. Sometimes we think we are alone in the world, until someone is brave enough to tell their story.
Like a flash of lightning it came to him—the unathletic high school student Ted Kooser saw a future as a famous poet that promised everything: glory, immortality, a bohemian lifestyle (no more doing dishes, no more cleaning his room), and, particularly important to the lonely teenager, girls!
Among others, you’ll meet Princess Salm-Salm, born Agnes Joy in 1840, who first achieved notoriety as a circus performer playing the accordion while riding a galloping horse, went on to marry a prince, and ended up the first woman awarded the Prussian Medal of Honor. Maine—boring? Never!
At age 52, Josephine finds herself carless and penniless, hitchhiking home from Montana to Maine, waiting for The Right Car to take her forward. This worldly journey with its hardships and happenstances becomes a spiritual journey-a wild test of faith and surrender and a testament to the best in humanity.
Inspired by his From the Ground Up blog for the New York Times, a beautifully written memoir about building and brotherhood
Confronted with the disappointments and knockdowns that can come in middle age—job loss, the death of his mother, a health scare, a divorce—Lou Ureneck needed a project that would engage the better part of him and put him back in life'
360 Square is Carol Lillieqvist Welsh's story of spirited resilience in the face of unrelenting adversity. Carol is an adventurous, fearless, risk taker who loves challenges and lives life passionately. Her life is a testament to the positive power of walking your own true path, setting goals, and trusting in the ability to make dreams come true in the face of adversity.
This is a book for E. B. White fans and also for dog lovers who may not have discovered the wit, style, and compassion of this distinguished American essayist. Here are the best and funniest of his essays, poems, letters, and sketches depicting over a dozen of White’s canine companions.
In print for fifty-five years, One Man's Meat continues to delight readers with E.B. White's witty, succinct observations on daily life at a Maine saltwater farm.
During the 1950s and '60s, writers E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith carried on a long correspondence by letter, despite living only a few miles apart on the coast of Maine. Often the letters were written from one or the other while they were traveling, but missing their homes and friends.
Because his feet got wet and sore on a hunting trip, L. L. Bean developed his famous boot and started the mail-order company that would change the sleepy town of Freeport, Maine, into a huge outdoor mall.
This insightful biography covers the life and career of Edmund "Ed" Muskie, from his childhood in Rumford, Maine, to his years as the governor of Maine.
Winner of the 2012 Sarton Memoir Award
“Every few years, a memoir comes along that revitalizes the form…With generous, precise, and unsentimental prose, Monica Wood brilliantly achieves this . . .
Born in Bath, Maine, in 1857, Charles W. Morse grew up on the Kennebec River with his family's tugboats, shipyards and trade in natural ice. After college he moved to New York City to handle the family's business affairs there. It took twenty years, but he created companies to form a monopoly on the sale of natural ice in New York City, making him very, very rich.
