This 1958 gem describes the author's life on Cranberry Point, Corea, Downeast Maine. Better known from her memoir We Took To The Woods, Dickinson is now a widow who is fortunate enough to be invited, by a reader she'd never met, to stay for the summer at their rough cabin with no electricity or running water in the small lobstering village. Neighbors are wary of her reputation as a reporter of the eccentric ways of rural folk, and warn her: "We ain't QUAINT! We don't want no book written about us." But she does, and it is a fitting tribute to the lives lived as they were one hundred years earlier, back in the days of sail and horse-drawn wagons. Gasoline engines and electric motors for lobster boats, and cars and electricity seem to be the main differences between 1858 and 1958, and the reader can only wonder how the advent of cellphones and internet have generated another wave sweeping over these formerly isolated, working class locales, off the beaten tourist trail of Route 1. Dickinson smoothly blends anthropology, sociology, and humor to pay homage to this hard, rocky coast, and her chapters on the likelihood of death on the water for the men, and the rituals of commemorating the losses, are most heartfelt and lovely.

Quote: "Fast-gathering clouds indicate a quick-breaking spell of weather, but if the clouds crawl slowly over the horizon there is yet time to do a day's work before running for shelter. "Short warning, soon past. Long foretelling, long last." Upon such lore depend their livelihoods and sometimes their very lives." ( )

I love Mrs. Rich's voice and her perspective. She is a gracious, spunky widow - a lady! And she has a true appreciation of the area and the passing time - reminds me of Wallace Stegner a bit. ( )