Articles
The Blue Bowl
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 Indelible Childhood Experience George Minot, author of a new book, The Blue Bowl, is the third of one family’s seven siblings to write about their childhood and its central event, the death of their mother. The family lived by the ocean, on the North Shore of Boston and on
Expecting to Fly: A Sixties Reckoning
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004 Remembering the Sixties, Without an Adult Filter Martha Tod Dudman currently lives in Northeast Harbor, and was a summer resident of the nearby town of Cranberry Isles while growing up. There are some Maine memories in her new book, Expecting to Fly: A Sixties Reckoning. A previous book, Augusta,
The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
New York: Scribners, 2003. Heartfelt memoir of a Cape Cod summer home It’s no surprise this book was nominated for the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2003 – it’s a gem of a well-told and heartfelt story. George Colt’s nostalgic memoir of his family’s Cape Cod summer home is as much a portrayal of
Turtles and an Island’s Future
It was March and in the high 80s with a searing sun as palm trees waved along a white sandy beach, lapped by turquoise water. No mistaking that for Vinalhaven. Yet we were reminded of Vinalhaven as we visited the two smaller islands off Puerto Rico’s northeast corner, Culebra and Vieques. Culebra is the same
Owls Head
New York: Quantuck Lane Press, 2003. Owls Head is not just a lighthouse or rocky point in midcoast Maine. In Rosamond Purcell’s book, we experience it as a locus of transformation. Owls Head documents this place, the salvage yard of William Buckminster. Purcell, touring the area in 1981 while teaching a photography class in Rockport,
Weekending in New England: 22 Complete Getaways to Pursue Your Passions
Woodstock, Vermont: Countryman Press, 2003. First of all, let’s define the author’s use of “passions.” If you picture that as indulging in purely sensual and possibly decadent pursuits, that’s not what this author is going to help you with. But if you enjoy the creature comforts of small hotels, inns, and bed-and-breakfast joints set in
The Fierce Yellow Pumpkin
with illustrations by Richard Egielski. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952) is known as a prolific author of children’s books. Less well known is her association with Vinalhaven, where she spent many summers beginning in 1938. Happy to leave Manhattan behind, she bought an abandoned quarrymaster’s quarters near Long Cove and The Basin,
Frankie’s Place: A Love Story
New York: Grove, 2003. Hardcover, 273 pages. This book serves as a guide, not only with recipes for good eating but with personalized examples of the good life, as witnessed by the author where he summers on Mount Desert. His how-to for happiness, in an over-simplification of the book’s storyline, might read as a recipe.
Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island
The spell cast by Islesboro on the author of this book began in 1968 at a party on another island – Manhattan – when a socialite friend, Annette Engelhard Reed (now Mrs. Oscar de la Renta), invited him to visit at her estate there. Mehta calls his first chapter “Enchantress,” a reference to Annette, rich,
Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog, and Just Enough Men
Broadway Books paperback, June 2003. In this book about several different kinds of journeys – introspective, retrospective, and cross-country, always with the destination “Happiness” – the most honest and homespun wisdom about getting “there” comes from snippets of the author’s conversations during visits to her grandparents’ summer place on North Haven. Grampy’s history is only