Spoonhandle, Ruth Moore's second novel, spent 14 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List and was made into the movie Deep Waters. Spoonhandle is about Maine, brilliantly authentic, but the story told is universal, as old as time as it deals with the struggle between love and meanness of spirit, between human dignity and greed.
The Weir, written in 1943, takes place on a small island fishing village in the years before World War II, set against a backdrop of handwork and struggle.
Chin Island had been a wild three miles of rock and forest when it was first settled. Now 75 years later, the families who lived there were a proud jumble of Scots, Italians, Portuguese and Greeks, chiefly fishermen and farmers. It was Christmas time when the feud began. Elbridge Gilman, who had unwittingly helped to start it, was a calm, kindly man with a deep love for the island and a deeper love for his wife and children. He did what he could to stop the feud from spreading. So, at first, did Liseo MacGimsey, his quick tempered partner in the fish wharf. But there were others like Stell, who fanned the flame until it threatened to engulf the entire island.
The Fire Balloon is a novel rich with a knowledge of life —telling of a kind of people, and of one particular American family, who seem timeless and enduring as the rocks and tides of their own Maine country. The tang of salt water is strong in the women as in the men, and the sea itself is the solid, ever-changing background for ... The Fire Balloon.
When Foley Craddock Tore Off My Grandfather's Thumb: The Collected Stories of Ruth Moore & Eleanor Mayo was edited by Sven Davisson and features 22 short stories from Moore and 6 from Mayo. Moore's stories include "Pennies in the Water" and "Farmer Takes a Newspaper," while Mayo's include "The Day Manuel Came" and "The Owner of the Apples."
In her eighth novel, originally published in 1960, Ruth Moore writes of basketball, coming of age, and small town life in coastal Maine.
From Kirkus Reviews:
Present day America- Ellsworth, Maine the setting -- and the theme the seasonal madness that seizes a town when the home town basketball team is making a killing. Basketball was all that mattered; the high school coach was king pin at the school, and his players cut classes with impunity, were given passing grades and promised athletic scholarships. And with this psychological background, it became very difficult for the McIntosh boys to work out their roles. Carlisle was playing brilliant- if undependable- ball; Ralph began to feel he was being used- for his reach and height alone- and to him it wasn't fun any more; and their crotchety old grandfather, Martin, was making it increasingly difficult as he put obstacles of work and obligation in their way. And then- after the state championship came the regional defeat in Boston, and the team was no longer the town's idol -- but rather their bait. For Carlisle, whose game had gone to pot anyhow and whose injured knee threatened to leave him stiff-legged for life, it was the end, and he seemed, at the story's close, to be going into a moral tailspin. Nobody could touch him:- his mother Susy, or Charles, who had lost a leg in the war; his girl, Debbie, who was out of patience with his self-pity; the science teacher, who had lost his job because he put grades ahead of games, but who had won the girl both he and the coach were courting. It's a good cross sectioning of the town-and though ending on a downbeat, with Carl morally disintegrating, the general sense is that those who mattered most had won something of value out of the whole.
A collection of 21 poems from celebrated novelist Ruth Moore, including "The Ghost of Phebe Bunker", "Overheard in a Bar," and "Come All Ye Murderers, All."
A collection of 39 poems and ballads from Ruth Moore, including "Rocks", "The Offshore Islands," and "Remembrance of a Deserted Coastal Village." Moore finished the writing the book shortly before she passed away in 1989 and it was published posthumously in 1990.
