The shore of Mount Desert Island, Maine
“She was the one who lived up country
Half in the woods on a rain-washed road
With a well not near and a barn too far
And the fields ledgy and full of stones
That the crows cawed over and liked to walk in…’’
From “After Reading The Country of the Pointed Firs,’’ by Jean Garrigue (1912-1972)
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) was Sarah Orne Jewett’s (1849-1909) most successful novel. It’s about a woman novelist who travels to Maine to find peace in order to finish a book.’’
Set in the fictional fishing community of Dunnet Landing, based on villages on Mount Desert Island, the novel reads rather like a collection of sketches, Like Jewett, the narrator is a woman, a writer, unattached and genteel. Anxious to protect her writing time, she works in an empty schoolhouse. Still, she also spend a lot of time with her landlady, Mrs. Todd, a herbalist, and the latter’s family and friends.
