Books Set in North America: Canada and Maine, United States

The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters (2023)

Read:  August 19, 2025

4 Stars

Books Set in North America; Maine, United States

The Frozen River,  by Ariel Lawhon (2023)

Read: December 22, 2024

5 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States: Maine

The Guest Book, by Sarah Blake (2019)

The Miltons were an old WASP family to whom the word “summer” was a verb.  One summer afternoon in 1936, while sailing in Penobscot Bay, Ogden Milton and his wife Kitty decided on a whim to buy Crockett’s Island.  This Island became the family’s rock and anchor for the next several decades.  The novel follows three generations of Ogden women, and the story goes back and forth between Kitty the matriarch, her daughter Joan, and granddaughter Evie.

A year earlier, the Milton’s had lost their 5-year old son when he fell from a window.  Thus, when Elsa, a German Jew who was an acquaintance of Ogden’s, asked Kitty if she would take care of her young son to protect him from the War, Kitty declined.

The Milton’s were known for hosting elaborate parties on their summer island, but the guest were all old money.  The next generation began mixing with people who were NOKD (not our kind, dear).

Ogden was head of a family investment firm and all his employees were of moneyed families.  When he hired Len Levy, a Jew, everyone was wary of him and the stereotypes of Jews and money was not far from their minds.  Len was assigned a somewhat menial task of reviewing documents.  In the process, he uncovered the firm’s investment with Nazis.

The surviving Milton son, Moss, was expected to join the firm and take over from his father.  Moss, however, was artistic and wasn’t interested in his family’s firm.  He befriended Reg Pauling, an African-American writer.  On a whim, he off-handedly invited both Reg and Len to his family’s island.  When they decided to take him up on the offer, the Milton’s were caught off guard.

Kitty spent the rest of her life trying to atone for the decisions she made in her life.

I felt this book tried to take on too much by mixing race and religious stereotypes into this novel.

It was a fast read.

Read:  August 7, 2020

3 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Maine

All the Beautiful Lies, by Peter Swanson (2018)

I picked up this crime thriller from the library solely because the novel is set in Maine.  I’m glad I found this author.  The descriptions of the small coastal Maine towns is spot on.

Harry Ackerson is just about to graduate from college when he gets a call saying that his father, who lived in a small coastal Maine town, had died when he fell off a rocky cliff on his daily walk.  Harry immediately returned home to his young step-mother, Alice, and to attend to funeral arrangements.

Harry’s father had run a rare bookshop in Manhattan, but after his wife died, he moved to Maine and opened a second shop.  After relocating to Maine, Harry’s father married Alice, his realtor.

Alice has a mysterious past.  We slowly learn the details as the chapter alternate between “Now” and “Then”.

After the autopsy is completed, the police begin to suspect that Harry’s father didn’t just fall, but believe he may have been murdered.  Then a mysterious young woman appears at the funeral.  Harry meets her to find out why she has come to town and to find out why she was interested in attending the funeral.

Harry learns that his father’s life was more complicated than he thought.  Who was responsible for his father’s death?  As the relationships between the characters unfolds, the mystery slowly unravels.

I found this book to be a very quick read and very enjoyable.

Read:  May 10, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Maine

The Stars are Fire, by Anita Shreve (2017)

For 2 weeks in October 1947, a horrible fire swept through the Maine coast.  The fire consumed nearly 250,000 acres of forest and totally destroyed nine towns, leaving thousands of people homeless.  This is the backdrop of Anita Shreve’s novel, The Stars are Fire.

Grace Holland is a young wife and stay-at-home mother of two small children.  She lives in a small coastal town on the coast of Maine.  Her husband is very controlling, and his mother despises her.  Grace’s social life consists of her children, her mother and her friend and neighbor, Rosie.  She is pregnant with her third child when the fire comes.

Her husband, Gene, joins the volunteer firefights, leaving Grace to protect their children and home.  The fire is too strong to protect the home, but Grace is able to save herself and the children by wading in the ocean.  After the fire has passed, Grace finds herself homeless until she remembers that her mother-in-law’s huge house may have been spared.  She moves in with her mother and children and awaits work of her husband’s fate.

In order to make ends meet, Grace finds a job assisting in a doctor’s office.  On her own, Grace finds that she has strength she didn’t know she had.  She begins to rebuild her life until, one fateful day, her life is again changed.  She now must face an even bigger challenge.

I have read other books by Anita Shreve, and enjoyed then.  I picked up this book because, having recently read a book about the 1917 Halifax explosion, I thought this book was a fictional account of that event.  That probably colored my reaction to this book.  The Stars are Fire takes place in Maine 30 years after the Halifax explosion.  I was well familiar with the Maine fire, having grown up in Maine and spending a lot of time in Bar Harbor, which was also badly damaged by the fire.

Read:  January 29, 2018

3 Stars

Books Set in the United States: New England

Mystery on the Isles of Shoals, by J. Dennis Robinson (2014)

I picked up this book for two reasons: First, it is about the Isles of Shoals, the mysterious islands off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, where I spent my childhood. Second, because it reminded me of my late mother. My mother first told me about the ax murders that had taken place in the 1870s on Smuttynose Island. This book isn't really a mystery, per se, as we known from the start that the murderer was captured, tried, convicted and executed. The "mystery" is the legend that surrounds the murders.

Almost as soon as the murder of two Norwegian immigrant women were murdered on Smuttynose Island, their deaths became local legend. The author of this book attempts to dispel the legend and compile the evidence that supported the trial of Louis Wagner and show that justice was served.

The two women, Karen Christensen and her sister-in-law, Anethe Matae Christensen, were brutally murdered on the night of March 6, 1873. The women, along with Maren Hontvet, were alone on the island that evening and, with their husbands, were the sole residents of the island. On that night, the women were all together in the house owned by the Hontvet's, Anethe and Maven's husbands were on the mainland preparing their nets for a fishing expedition. John Hontvet, Maren's husband, was a successful fisherman and was believed to have some money hidden in his house.

Enter Louis Wagner. He was a Prussian immigrant down on his luck. He stole a dory and oared out the 10 or so miles to the island in the dark of the night with plans to seal John Hontvet's stash of money. He knew the men of the house were on the mainland (in fact, he was going to assist them in preparing their nets), so thought he could easily enter the house, grab the money and return to the mainland with no one being the wiser. His planned robbery, however, went terribly wrong, when, upon entering the dark house on Smuttynose, he awakened Karen, who was an unexpected visitor in the house.

He picked up an ax and began bludgeoning the women. Maren was able to escape, but Karen and Anethe were not so lucky. After stealing approximately $16, Wagner rowed back to the mainland and set off for Boston, where he spent to stolen money on a haircut and new clothing.

Wagner quickly became the main murder suspect and was caught. He never actually confessed and offered numerous theories and stories explaining his sudden departure for Boston, not of which made any sense. Despite this, many people questioned whether or not he was the actual murderer, and in the a trial that went on for days, many technician theories were raised. He was ultimately found guilty and hanged.

Many books have been written about the Smuttynose ax murders, including Anita Shreve's novel, The Weight of Water. Her book takes a fictional spin on the murders and depicts Wagner in a more sympathetic light than the fact show.

I found this book an interesting read. As I noted, it is not so much of a mystery as it is a compilation of facts the support a finding that Louis Wagner had the means and opportunity to commit this horrendous crime. The author also provides an interesting history into life in the New England fishing villages and thoughts on capital punishment at this period in time.

3 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Maine

Leeway Cottage, by Beth Gutcheon (2005)

This book purport to be about Denmark during World War II, and that is a part of the story, but it primarily focuses on two spoiled rich women and their inability to treat their husbands and children nicely.

Leeway Cottage is a summer home somewhere along the Maine coast.  The descriptions of the Maine coast rang true.

3 Stars

Read: August 6, 2014

Books Set in the United States: Maine

The Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline (2013)

This is a fascinating novel about the Orphan Trains that came about during the 1920s and 1930s in the United States.  Young children were placed on trains and sent to the mid-West where they were placed in foster homes.  Often the new foster parents wanted only an extra helping hand to work around the house or farm.

This novel was about the friendship of a 90-year old woman who had once been such an orphan and a young, troubled girl who was bouncing from foster home to foster home in Maine.

I enjoyed the book, but it fell apart at the end.

4 stars

Read: June 7, 2014