Maine Books

Carl Little, a poet, essayist, art critic and (to make ends meet) Director of Public Relations for College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, has made it his life's work to glorify his great loves: language, painting, and Maine. In Art of the Maine Islands he collaborates once again with his `Comrade in Art,' designer Arnold Sklonick--this time to offer an assortment of artists all in one way or another captivated by the charm of Maine's chilly dark air, red rocks and frothing waters. Little and Skolnick have the breadth of appreciation to have included contemporary art along with the more staid efforts of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The book's lively and diverse ninety-six pages probably are more designed to invite leafing through on a coffee table, than to increase the dry and dusty clutter on the scholar's bookshelf. It is homage to a place artists have always loved--and in its colorful pages you can see why.

For anyone who as ever set sail around the islands of Maine, this book is a must. Having sat on Thomas Cabot's granite bench on Butter Island, I feel like I knew him. This book shares many great stories of exploring the coast of Maine and some of his family history.

His summer home on Swans Island truly is a beautiful spot..... hard wood trees and all.

Author Dale Cox brings to life the little known Sept. 1864 battle of Marianna, Florida. The work is well structured and well researched. The author does a masterful job describing the period setting and conditions from many perspectives. He has delved deeply into the various county histories, correspondence, pension records, and census data to bring us an original treatment of this obscure action. The bulk of the narrative is gleaned from first hand accounts of various participants and natives.

The Marianna raid and battle was the culmination of an earlier probe which had illustrated the vulnerability of the region. Although it was a small affair in a large war, Marianna was one of many such small actions that effectively strangled the agricultural and economic output of the South late in the war. Along their path the raiders stripped the region of foodstuffs and other supplies.

In the raid General Asboth with about 700 Union cavalry and mounted U.S. Colored infantry rapidly penetrated from Navy Cove to Campbellton in West Florida. The force then turned southeast to strike Marianna. Their movements were too rapid for the various CSA home guard and cavalry to effectively oppose and the CSA was uncertain of their whereabouts until they reached Campbellton. The CSA commander, Col. Montgomery was slow to request reinforcements, call out the home guard, and concentrate his forces. With his semi-organized companies and home guard, he set a last minute trap in Marianna that succeeded in wounding several Union officers. However, Asboth's flanking force enveloped many of these defenders. The next day the raiders withdrew--bringing with them approximately 100 prisoners and 600 fleeing slaves.

Mr. Cox is very even-handed in his coverage with no perceptible North/South bias. He does particularly well conveying how hard things were for all residents (secessionist, unionist, and neutral) at the hands of both Union and Confederate authorities. He does an admirable job of reviewing the important roles that slaves and colored troops played in the area, the battle, and in the post war years. I particularly appreciate his presentation of various and sometimes-contradictory facets in multiple accounts. He is careful to weigh each and propose a reasonable interpretation or correction based on the available information.

Mr. Cox does seem overly forgiving of CSA Col. Montgomery's substantial errors. While he makes a convincing case that Montgomery's actions in the battle itself were sound and rebuts contemporary editorials claiming intentional sabotage or cowardice, the author cannot adequately explain the soundness of Montgomery's strategic actions preceding the battle. Although it is true that Montgomery could not have known which way the raiders were headed, he failed to call on reinforcement promptly, and he failed to concentrate to defend the most valuable potential target. While the colonel appears to have been trying to cover all bases, he failed to appreciate the rapidity with which raiders had moved in the past, and the poor scouting performances turned in by Florida cavalry in prior raids. He was caught largely unprepared.

While the narrative itself is well polished, there are a few things that should be improved to compliment the text. The most important of these would be maps. The main text has a very simple map that really doesn't help the reader. What is really called for is a full-page map of the raid's route displaying rivers, dates, clashes, feints, and the towns mentioned in the text. Another map is needed to show the streets, paths and bridges of the battle itself. A second substantial flaw is the lack of a bibliography. Although the author provides footnotes for his primary sources, some of his secondary sources appear not to have been footnoted or at least not where one would expect to find them. (There are also a dozen or so typographical or editing errors, primarily late in the text, but the overall impression of the editing is quite good.)

In terms of research, balance, and analysis this is a 6-point effort on a 5-point scale. Unfortunately, the lack of maps makes it much harder to follow than it should be. If you are interested in small raids, Florida Civil War history, or the U.S. Colored Troops, then I highly recommend this book. Grab the "Official Military Atlas of the Civil War" to understand the period place names and routes, and look up the Marianna street maps online so that you can follow the text of the battle. "The Battle of Marianna, Florida" is an excellent companion to William Nulty's "Confederate Florida: The Road to Olustee."

The maps in this book are very localized - Boston, the Berkshires, mid Maine Coast. So depending on where you are, you either get a bunch of rides or none at all. Only Vermont is really fully represented.

The maps are clearly drawn and good, and work well in conjunction with a GPS. The directions are broken out by consecutive mile, which is the way I like it, but they should also provide the "miles to next leg" information too for people who prefer that.

The book offers thorough information on dress, etiquette, food and more. It suggests you take it easy - "don't be goaded by others into riding a tour that you feel unprepared for."

Good challenging rides for those who want to drive out and do a 50-100 mile ride somewhere beautiful. Again, because of the length and the fact that you're probably going a distance from home, I definitely suggest bringing a GPS and scoping out which businesses are still in business for food and other necessities beforehand.

A good book which largely delivers what it promises. However, it is best used in conjunction with a more comprehensive map and/or guide, if you're visiting a particular region. Give it 4.5 stars.

Good Points: 1) The author points out "kid-friendly" features on hikes and gives good descriptions. 2) Most of the hikes have pretty good thumbnail maps

Drawbacks: 1) Introductory map could be better (more detailed) to help reader find trails 2) Some hikes lack thumbnail maps. Why? 3) Abilities of children vary wildly. We found that a "moderate" hike can be strenuous for an inexperienced or out-of-shape child (or adult, for that matter).

Is Maria Morrison's The Blessing Box a memoir told in poems, or pieces of other lives glimpsed and absorbed into her soul and retold in first person? I don't know. I do know what reaches me in every poem is the `I', and the `My'.

The feeling is most poignant in the poem The Hours: "my mother photographed/the hours we had/each day between /my father leaving the house/and my father returning...I pull them out/to remember what we were/supposed to be."

In Constellations: "Each night,/crystals of frost form like stars/on our bedroom windows/from our warm breath asking-/When should we go for help? When / can we come back in?"

The lines are simple and straightforward, as a child telling us her secret. We lean close, and say, yes, or oh, no! This is not an easy childhood we are invited to witness. This slim volume is a life told in vignettes stripped achingly bare. It seduces us in the early pages with sunshine and prayer, and then it takes us farther into dark corners and asks us to read between the lines. This is poetry noire It opens up parts of our own soul we do not know we have until a turn of phrase echoes deep and resonates throughout our being and reminds each of us our own fragile childhood and how it shaped our lives.

Morrison wears no rose-colored glasses, as she looks back on her childhood and then at the woman it created. The naked words seem stark with a matter-of-fact and childlike narrative voice that flashes back to past hurts that repeat in each generation. We witness her innocence flee before love that hurts, and her hope hang by a slender thread. In Monastic, she tells us her siblings were each named for those who came before and how the cycle continued, but she ends with, "I am their last./I have my own name."

I hear an echo of the women in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. An-Mei: "My mother not know her worth until too late - too late for her but not for me." And again, Suyuan to her daughter June "I see you."

If this is Maria Morrison's story, it is between the lines that the full tale is told. I read The Blessing Box, and know it's not too late. I see you; I see me. I have my own name.

No, this is not a book about architects unless you consider, as I do, people of accomplishment as builders. This is a story book, fiction based on fact, of Maine people, most well-known, but some not so well-known whose stories grace these pages and come to life under the pen of a gifted writer. Not a book to be read at a couple of sittings, but to pick up and enjoy, one chapter at a time.

This book is the best book and perhaps the only book that gives special emphasis to seashells found in Puerto Rico. Scientific as well as popular listing of the shells is included. The textual description of the shells is quite adequate. Also, a general location of where the shells can be found is frequently included. On a less positive note, most all the pictures are in black and white and often the resolution leaves something to be desired. In all fairness, the book is in need of an update being last published in 1975. Since its last publication, several new shells previously unlisted or listed as "not found" have indeed been located. In spite of these few short comings, this book is still an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Puerto Rican seashells.

I found the short articles in this collection to be quite fascinating. When I first saw the book, I really thought nothing of it, until I opened it up - I couldn't put it down. I was compelled to read every single article, advertisement, etc. It's a fun coffee table book that's quite a conversation piece. If I hadn't ventured to Stonington, ME, I would have never discovered this great find!!

CEREMONIES is a big, ambitious book. It takes place in the mid-80s, and is one of the best accounts I've read of the changes in the gay movement particular to those years, changes that have repercussions today. And because it takes place in a small town in Maine, it focuses, in a way I haven't often encountered in gay-themed fiction, on how those changes affected people living outside of the major cities. The Matthew Shepherd-like murder that is the central event of the story isn't actually what CEREMONIES is about-in fact, it's quickly (though horrifically) dispensed with in the Prologue. The book is really about the reactions to this murder by a very diverse group of people who have the fact of their sexual preference in common, but often not much else; they are very far from being a community. The story is told by half a dozen or more narrators, some "in", some "out". They include an emotionally disturbed boy who was friends with the murdered man; a very proper widowed school teacher who has always hidden her feelings about women; an actor who is in town for the summer; a young lesbian couple who are raising a son together; and-to me, most movingly-the staunch, older New England types who have lived their whole lives in Cardiff, Maine, and arrived at a degree of comfort in living with their secret, a comfort they now find threatened. While CEREMONIES is a study of how a community slowly and painfully forms out of a group of individuals, and a lot of fairly subtle political issues are raised and thoughtfully discussed, what gives it real depth is this diversity of voices. Cathcart makes them all believable and three-dimensional, not only the more sympathetic characters but those who are not so sympathetic as well. None of them feels like an example or a type, they're all unique personalities, with their own flaws, troubles, eccentricities, and senses of humor. That makes the issues raised not just dry, political-journal matters, but facts that real people deal with in their daily lives, each in his or her own way, often with passion, sadness and some really convincing (and moving) moments of revelation and celebration. I would recommend CEREMONIES especially to younger gay people who may not identify as strongly as some of us middle-agers with the concerns and struggles of twenty years ago, and to straight readers who might enjoy a break from the one or two stereotyped gay characters that appear so often in mainstream fiction.