Category: Book Review

Clipper ships, splices, knots, cowboys, pyramid-builders, bridge engineers, tightrope walkers, executioners—this book has them all. Like Salt, Cod, and other thoroughly researched books about familiar things and their many lives, Rope considers the bundled and twisted combinations of plants, metals, and synthetics we humans all use to keep our world running—or standing, as may… SEE MORE

Fly For Your Life: A Hawk and Heron Risk Everything for Each Other By Eugene Pool (Ghost Car Press, 2025) From the windswept shores of Maine to warm skies over the Bahamas, Fly For Your Life follows two feathered friends on a perilous journey. While soaring above coastal beauty, osprey… SEE MORE

The Self-Fed Farm and Garden: A Return to the Roots of the Organic Method By Eliot Coleman (2025, Chelsea Green Publishing) Eliot Coleman may be familiar to you because you’ve read other books by him: The New Organic Gardener, Four-Season Harvest, The Winter Harvest Handbook. Each covers aspects of organic… SEE MORE

In a Distant Valley By Shannon Bowring (2025, Europa) Author Shannon Bowring describes her fictitious town of Dalton as in “the county”—a reference to Maine’s northernmost Aroostook County. With its isolation and harsh winters, some readers might assume it’s a place where few would choose to live unless rooted there.… SEE MORE

The View from Here: Reflections on the Deep North, the Wild East By Franklin Burroughs (Down East Books) In his 50-plus years in Maine, the South Carolina-born writer Franklin Burroughs has attained the stature of one of the state’s most beloved and brilliant nature writers. His Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay won… SEE MORE

The Last Navigator: A Young Man, An Ancient Mariner, The Secrets of the Sea By Steve Thomas (Revised Edition, The Abbeville Press, 2023) I’ve never met Steve Thomas, but we’ve shared a lot: time in Micronesia (where his story takes place and I spent two years in the Peace Corps);… SEE MORE

Everyone Knows But You: A Tale of Murder on the Maine Coast By Thomas E. Ricks; Pegasus Books (2024) Early in Thomas Ricks’ novel Everyone Knows But You, FBI agent Ryan Tapia goes into the local diner on Liberty Island to begin a murder investigation. The Fisherman’s Pal, as the… SEE MORE

From the Cockpit: Selected Writings by James S. Rockefeller Jr. From Strut & Axle, Owls Head Transportation Museum Journal 1979-2013 (June 2025) James S. Rockefeller Jr. (also known as “Pebble”) who died in January was one of the founders (along with Tom Watson Jr. and Steve Lang) of the Owls… SEE MORE