Six Fascinating Books Set in Maine
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
A Varied List of Maine Books
I was recently visiting my old stomping grounds in Maine for a whirlwind trip to see family, and I started thinking about Maine books.
I felt as though each of the titles here made pretty good use of a Maine setting, which, after all, is too wonderful to be squandered. Sometimes I did wish for more of a Maine presence in these reads, but I hereby present to you A Varied List of Maine Books. The list includes: literary fiction that's part of an interconnected series; a romantic story about starting over; a memoir focused on the 1960s; historical fiction about a midwife that's based on a real historical figure; the first in a mystery series centered around former CIA agents; and literary fiction/historical fiction based upon disturbing events on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine.
Have you read any of these books? Which other books would you include on this Maine list?
01 Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
In Lucy by the Sea, familiar Strout characters Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William flee New York City for rural Maine during the Covid-19 pandemic. The novel offers introspection, vulnerability, and new beginnings.
But despite her insecurities and what sometimes feels like fragility, Lucy is often able to see the difficult truth in situations and face them with stolid resolve. She alludes to her difficult childhood circumstances (which are more fully explored in My Name Is Lucy Barton), and we see that her lifelong ability to cope with despair and grim events serve her well in her current circumstances.
The nearby ocean is a haunting presence but also a steady, everchanging comfort to Lucy. To her surprise, she begins to notice and respond to the wonders of the light, the weather, the air, and the changing scenery of her daily walks in beautiful and immersive passages in the book.
Strout takes us into the heart of a stressful, unusual pandemic situation in which Lucy and William, longtime friends and ex-spouses, live in intimate solitude together, wondering about and worrying about their daughters, each other, themselves, and the world.
In order to feel the full weight of this book, I think it's important to first read Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton. Lucy's creation of an imaginary, supportive mother and her loving responses to and comfort for Lucy in this book absolutely broke my heart. Oh William! is another Strout book linked to this story, but I didn't respond to that one as much as Lucy Barton or Lucy by the Sea.
For my full review, please check out Lucy by the Sea.
02 Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
Evvie Drake Starts Over, by the author of Flying Solo, is sweet, with funny dialogue, surprises, best-friendship, and a Maine setting I loved.
Evvie Drake has become something of a recluse in her quiet seaside Maine town ever since her husband's death in a car crash a year earlier.
Her best friend Andy is doing his best to support her. while it seems Evvie is doing her best to bury her grief.
Andy's childhood best friend Dean is a former Major League pitcher--but he has the "yips" and can't throw straight anymore.
Dean's escape from media scrutiny leads him to rent Evvie's apartment for a time. And as the two become friends, they make a rule: Dean won't ask about Evvie's late husband, and Evvie won't ask about baseball.
But having a listening ear in Dean, who is completely separate from Evvie's "before" life, means she might finally be ready to open up about what her relationship was like before she became a widow. And Evvie's ignorance about baseball means Dean can safely vent and maybe even figure out what's holding him back. They may be able to help the other find some version of peace, just by being there.
Oh, this book!
Linda Holmes's Evvie Drake Starts Over is sweet and funny and lovely. I listened to it as an audiobook while I gardened, and it was a perfect summer story. I loved Holmes’s writing and Evvie’s voice.
For my full review, please check out Evvie Drake Starts Over.
03 When We Were the Kennedys by Monica Wood
Wood's memoir is captivating and lovely, poignant, sweet without being overly sentimental, and just all-around wonderful.
In 1963 the Woods were a typical Catholic immigrant family in Mexico, Maine. But when Monica's father dies suddenly, Monica and her three sisters begin to drift, and the family seems in danger of feeling unmoored forever.
When We Were the Kennedys is a memoir about grieving deeply, leaning on family and community in a crisis and in common suffering, and figuring out the impossible: how to move on after devastating tragedy.
Wood gorgeously evokes the many characters and unfathomable events that changed her family's existence--as well as that of her community and the entire country--in 1963.
I loved this fantastic memoir! Wood's memoir is heartwarming and funny and tragic and vivid. I ate it up in a single day.
For my full review, please see When We Were the Kennedys.
04 The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
I loved the 1700s wintry Maine setting and the convictions of the historical fiction novel's strong midwife character, based upon a real-life figure and her diaries.
Historical fiction? Check. Maine setting? Check. Female character in the medical profession during a time when this wasn't the norm? Check. Cold setting? Check! The Frozen River ticks so many Bossy boxes, I knew this one had to zip to the top of my to-read list.
Lawhon's novel is based upon the real-life figure of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who defied tradition and convention--and, in Lawhon's historical fiction story, the law.
It's 1789, and in a rural Maine community, a local man turns up dead--frozen face up in the Kennebec River. Many who knew him aren't sad to find that he is no longer a belligerent threat in town. But he had been one of two men charged with the rape of one of Martha's best friends, and now the sole living accused man is one of the town's most respected figures--as well as its judge. The mystery of what happened to the man is a subplot that winds through the story.
I loved the details of life in the time period, as well as the unassuming women who show their true strength and conviction when it counts. Martha's position as midwife means she's privy to all sorts of secrets and truths in town. I love a story about a woman in the medical profession during an era when this was not the norm, and the details of her care for new mothers and babies was one of my favorite aspects of The Frozen River. In Lawhon's story, Martha is also a strong-willed feminist who is set on fighting for the rights of the largely powerless women in her orbit.
There are no Maine accents in evidence in the audiobook, nor terminology that felt Maine-specific. The bulk of the Maine setting is established by the cold and by the mentions of the Kennebec River flowing through the town of Hallowell (which is near Augusta).
For my full review of this book, please check out The Frozen River.
05 The Spy Coast (The Martini Club #1) by Tess Gerritsen
A former CIA operative retires to small-town Maine--along with other former agents--to live out a quiet existence, until figures from the past roar in to turn everything on its head.
Maggie Bird is a retired CIA operative who has made a simple home for herself in rural Maine. She's tried not to make emotional connections and she keeps to herself--old habits from her former life.
Then Maggie is visited by someone with knowledge of her past--just before a dead body shows up in her driveway and someone tries to kill Maggie.
All of the upheaval seems connected to an operation from years earlier, "Malta"--and Maggie's perceived betrayal of key players in it. Maggie just can't figure out who's still alive and who would suddenly be after revenge. She also suspects that she can't trust the Agency after a data breach revealed the names of the Malta operatives involved.
Unbeknownst to the other citizens in Purity, Maine, the town has drawn multiple former intelligence agents (they make up the "martini club" in the series title). They didn't all work together in their former lives, but they are friends--despite habitual emotional distance--with commonalities in their backgrounds. Now they operate as a team to try to determine who is after Maggie and why.
For my full review of this book, please check out The Spy Club.
06 This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Harding bases his slim historical fiction novel This Other Eden on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine, tipping his eccentric characters farther and farther toward tragedy as mainland men motivated by greed aim to destroy the community.
Back in 1792, a formerly enslaved man Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife found a safe haven on an island off the coast of Maine.
A century later, the Honeys' descendants and their diverse neighbors--some have escaped from trouble, while others are seeking peace and a simple life--make up a hardscrabble community that must scratch and claw to subsist. Yet they remain on their island, safe from the judgment and danger of the mainland.
When a schoolteacher-turned-missionary arrives to educate the island's children, he draws the attention of eugenics-focused authorities, who set out to forcibly evacuate the island.
The secluded community in the book is like a large family, dependent on only each other, and they are focused on nature and on subsisting independently. The story is inspired by the real-life, formerly integrated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine (in the book it is called Apple Island).
The story tips its island characters farther and farther toward tragedy, then plunges headfirst into the various heartbreaking consequences of mainland strangers' decisions, cold cruelties, and greedy motivations, culminating in the forceful removal of the peaceful Apple Island inhabitants.
Harding's language is beautiful as it evokes the harsh landscape and the characters' connection to the weather, the terrain, and the natural world.
For my full review of this novel, please check out This Other Eden.
コメント