Maine Books

Contrary to the way the books are written, you should read Brian Kelly Route one first. It lays out the background for Maggie May's diary and makes this book more enjoyable. This book started out strong. I was so intriqued by the character of Maggie. Faced with a pregnancy at 15, she moved on and made a great life for herself. The love story is classic and will make anyone believe in true love. The one disappointment of this book was the ending. I feel like Coughlin was in a rush to finish the book and rushed the ending with a forced epilogue. I hope that Obscene Bliss carries on in the same fashion as Brian Kelly and Maggie May's Diary. A great love story to follow through to the end.

My family has vacationed in Wells for years. I picked this book up last summer and loved it. I am reading it for a second time now and loving it all over again. I would highly recomend it.

Thomas Coughlin is a outstanding auther. Take the journey to Brian Kelley route 1 and Maggie May's diary and you will be lost in a world you won't want to end.The first chapters grab you and there is no putting the book down.You will feel like your there in lowell, maine and all the places this book will take you. Thanks Thomas and please write some more.

I picked up Maggie May's Diary ... The storyline caught me quickly and was a pleasent and page turning read. Would highly recommend to everyone and have just ordered the companion book. Hope more books keep coming as the characters grow on you. Great Book !!!

I have never read any of Thomas E Couglin books,but when we were vacationing in York Maine, I saw in a book store, they had him listed as a local author,I have since read the book when I returned to florida,Mr Coughlin made you feel like you were part of Maggie Mays life,and his writeing is so efficient I actually could picture the different areas of Maine he was writeing about.
From the minute I purchased the book,I was so intrigued by it I couldnt put it down,trust me this book was worth every penny.I cant wait to read Route 1.
Thank-You :-)

With the purchase of this map, we've located successfully every lighthouse on land and a few from the water. This is our third copy as we've worn out our previous two copies. Can't wait to go and explore again! Great value, low cost, loads of memories!

This is an excellent map to use if you want to see the lighthouses of Maine! Good information, some great watercolor renderings of many of them. I didn't realize there were so many there to see! This combined with a Maine guidebook (some lighthouses are not accessible by land) would be a great addition to any trip.

This guide is a concise and fairly informative pamphlet for those travelling along the Maine coast. It is very inexpensive, and does not take up much space, but covers all the lighthouses one might run into along the coast.

This guide will surely come in handy, but as someone has already stated, real lighthouse pictures would have been better than illustrations.
Still, I wish I had had(?) one of these for directions to lighthouses in other trips we've made to New England. So many are really hard to find...especially for tourists!
It was "as advertised."
Thanks.

I actually expected a booklet. All you get is a single piece of paper folded like a map. The descriptions are OK, and it does point out locations accurately. But, I really expected more.

I discovered this series mid-series, but have gone back and read all the books now. This is definitely a fun series, a combination of murder, prints and history. Maggie is a very likeable and fun character with a lot of depth for a murder mystery. Definitely a series worth reading!

Recently widowed Maggie Summer is participating in the Rensselaer County Spring Antiques Fair. She owns Shadows Antiques.

There have been some deaths of antique dealers, so everyone is on edge. Security has been hightened for the show as well.

Many of the same dealers who were at the show where John Smithson died of a poisoning last week are at this show. The dealers make the identical circuit each year and seem to know each other well. But do they really?

On opening night there is another death. The show goes on, but Maggie spends almost as much time investigating as she does selling antiques. She is determined to help prove that her friend Gussie's nephew Ben, who has Down's syndrome, is not the killer. Hardest part is trying to prove who is. She can't believe any of these people that she knows could be a killer.

I really enjoy this series. Maggie is such an enjoyable character. The interspersing of information about antiques really moves the story. I found myself having trouble putting the book down. I'm not an antiques enthusiast, but the way she weaves the story and the antiques information together really makes it interesting.

I highly recommend this book and the whole series.



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If you are looking for a refreshing cozy with interesting facts, Shadows at the Fair is for you. The mystery was not hard to figure out but I did enjoy getting there. I fully intend to read the other books in this series simply because they are enjoyable to read.

I've waited too long to start this series by Lea Wait - featuring a part-time antique print seller and college professor Maggie Summer. Maggie travels to antique shows all around the north-eastern area of the US in between teaching semesters. When one of Maggie's fellow antique dealers dies at their latest show, Maggie struggles to prove the innocence of a friend, and herself, as well. Subtly romance is blooming for Maggie with Will Brewer, but Maggie gets distracted when another dealer dies - and she wonders, could Will be the killer? With only a weekend to solve the mystery, Maggie manages well to close the case before everyone departs for their next show. I've enjoyed the storylines, and am envious of the northern fare. I've learned bits & pieces about prints, and regret some of the book donations I've made!

The first in the Anique Print Mystery is an exciting beginning. Maggie Summers, recently widowed, is back selling her antique prints at the Rensselaer County Antique Fair. (Initially that's why I bought the book, because of the name of the county and the name of my town. Am I ever glad I did.) Maggie is happy to be back selling her wares to take her mind off her husband's recent death and discovery of his philandering. But soon a murder of an antique dealer and then his wife, has her searching for clues to clear a friend's nephew and to find the true murderer. The inside look at the antique fair business is interesting. Those who watch the Antique Roadshow may find this of interest.

This is the first of Ms Hall's books I have read - don't know how I missed them for so long as I am an avid mystery reader! It will definitely NOT be my last! It kept you questioning all through the book with many surprises. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am on here looking for more of her books.

As all the other fiction titles by this author, I truly enjoyed Steal Away. Teri Blake-Addison, the sleuth of this new series, is not annoying and pretentious like many mystery sleuths, however, she is not as well developed as she could be. I imagine that will happen slowly in the next installments. The story of Steal Away, the missing wife and strange, often endearing characters Ms. Blake-Addison encounters while seeking her answers, make for an interesting book that's hard to put down.

An attractive, well-thought-of minister's wife in Philadelphia, a woman who grew up on the water, is missing. Her sailboat, with two close friends aboard has gone unreported. Now her widower, Dr. Carl Houseman, wants some answers. He turns to private investigator Terri Blake-Addison, a scrappy woman who pulls few punches and has a clear understanding of her limitations. No superwoman here, just real folks.

There is a problem. Terri is locked in a distracting process with members of her church because she wants to teach Sunday school and there are apparently some who object. Other problems occur. Dr. Houseman is the head of a vast and growing media ministry that's finally worth a whole lot of money. And, the case is already old; his wife died five years ago.

Blake-Addison takes the assignment and follows the trail to a remote Maine village where Ellen grew up and where she apparently died. The more the investigator probes and peels back old and new secrets, the more complex becomes the picture. Author Hall has done a first rate job of balancing two interesting threads and keeping the reader aware of their intersections. Why did Ellen Houseman become unhappy in her role in the Houseman Empire? How much antipathy and jealousy were present in the second rank of executives? How did the secret relationships among residents and visitors in the tiny Maine village affect Ellen and her friends? What really happened to Ellen Houseman?

The exploration of religious empire building and the very human intercepts played out against the tiny but important individual crises and triumphs in Maine is enthralling and constantly interesting. Hall has done a fine job with this book.

I don't usually like Christian fiction because it's often poorly written and the characters are shallow. A friend lent me this book, and frankly, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up until the early hours of the morning reading it. The story is believable and engaging, the characters have depth and are complicated like people in real life, and the religious aspects of the story are very natural--not simply tacked on. The implied criticism of the judgementalism of some Christians is also well done. I'm ordering the next book in the series and hope Linda Hall will write more soon! Thanks for a good read!

This was a great mystery. The author did a great job in presenting a mystery with so many questions to be answered. What happened to Ellen? Was she alive? Who was the mysterious Garda and her daughter. Why was Ellen so unhappy? And mixed in with the main story was Teri, the PI who was trying to solve the mystery for Ellen's husband Carl. She is struggling to fit in with the church, as well as struggling with the ghost of her husband, Jack's 1st wife.

The book not only presented a great mystery of betrayal and deception, but demonstrated the theme of grace and forgiveness. The book showed that no matter how far you stray from God, forgiveness is always there, no matter how "big" the sin is.

I do think that some things were rushed towards the end. What happened to Jimmy Jarvis? There was some speculation, but nothing was really resolved. Maybe that is just one of those things that will leave the readers guessing. Also, what happened to Audrey towards the end?

I would have liked to see the marriage between Teri and Jack explored more. I know that Teri felt that she was competing with the ghost of Jack's first wife. Maybe this will be explored in future books in the series.

Again, a great mystery book! I look forward to reading Chat Room.

Aside from the third of this book that was really about lobstering and its lifestyle, I found this book terribly boring.

The last quarter of the book was entertaining (the whale) but when the author has several great climaxes he does nothing with them (she just threw it overboard?) and the ending, in my opinion, is the epitome of a bad ending. It was completely anti-climactic and by this point in the book I really didn't care about imaging what was, or could have been, for Lucky Lunt.

I don't write many recommendations but had to contribute one after seeing that just about everyone who reviewed this book gave it a 5-star rating. I'd love to be able to recommend a better "lobstering book" but I haven't found any others yet. Unless you're hell bent on learning some lobstering lingo and getting a vague idea of the life of a lobsterman, I'd suggest skipping this book.

Outstanding! A good friend of mine who owns and operates a commercial fishing supply store on Cape Cod gave me a copy of this book. Bravo Mr. Carpenter! You did your homework. (Not too hard when you live among these finest-kind of fishermen). A very entertaining and humorous account of a Maine lobsterman and the sometimes tumultuous life that goes along for the ride. A very good read. I recommend it highly!

This wonderful novel has none of the mushy psuedo literarism of the Oprah novel age. At times it reminded me of Ken Kesey and J.D. Salinger. Well written and intelligent. A must read.

Vivid, irressistible characters and a climax worthy of Melville.
Rarely have characters so clearly represented working-class America and the struggle for survival in our lower income classes. Not to mention, it's a hoot. I laughed out loud too many times to count.
Read this book. You'll never forget it or regret it.

As a coastal Mainer I can comfortably say that the characters Mr. Carpenter depicts seem reasonable, if not somewhat under-represented. Of course, this is simply the framework of a larger message. True to what the reader's guide later mentions, this author lures the reader into a supposedly humorous story, and then pulls the rug out from underneat. This book is not a comedy. In this respect, it reminded me of "A Fine Balance," in that it got worse and worse. Forget about allusions to Moby Dick, or anything else -- this novel is original. It is hoped that in the end, the reader will sympathize with the main character, appreciating his raw and enviable humanity. While rough around the edges, and mostly to the core, Lucky Lunt will be there when you need him. I could not put this book down.

I don't know what it is about this book. I fell in love with it the very first time I read it, at least 20 years ago. I've borrowed it from my library at least once a year ever since, and finally got enough sense to buy my own copy. It haunts you, and the more often you read it, the more details you notice. It's one of the few books I return to over and over.

I WILL READ THE BOOK OF "THE CRYING CHILD" AFTER I WATCHED THE MOVIE OF THE SAME TITLE. IT WAS THE GOOD AND SAD MOVIE!!!

I found this to be a very chilling tale. I couldn't put this book down and I look forward to reading other titles by Mrs. Michaels. The suspense is amazing as you find there are more than plenty of suspects, but that you never suspected the actual evil doer.

A genuine ghost story which made for an entertaining read. Often Michaels opts for a more logical conclusion leaving the supernatural events to be explained by a nefarious slight of hand by one of the characters. In this book the ending is as gothic as the house in which the story takes place.

I'll have to admit out of all Barbara Micheals' books that I have read so this one is the most chilling/scary one I have ever read. When you start reading it. It seems a bit slow at first but gets better because you can almost feel that erie coldness and chill down your spine. It a while to walk off the feeling of uneasiness after reading the book even after I read a second time. I recommend this book to all fans of Barbara Micheals and those that love books that send chills to your bones.

Sarah Strohmeyer's "Sweet Love" follows the hectic life of single mother Julie Mueller, a TV reporter who's currently single and seriously overworked. Julie's hoping to be picked to follow the upcoming presidential campaign even as she digs up facts on the abduction and murder of a local girl. As a single mother, the case touches her deeply, and she oversteps her journalistic bounds in pursuit of the truth.

Julie lives above her parents, and her mother Betty, a breast cancer survivor, is desperate to see Julie matched up with the perfect man before she dies. Betty enrolls Julie in a dessert class by the renowned chef Renee D'Ours, much to Julie's chagrin. Julie feels herself to be a modern, liberated woman, and has no desire to be chained to the kitchen simply to appease some male whim. She feels strongly that her mother is little more than a domestic slave to her father, who disappears as soon as Betty is ill. Julie struggles with the sense that her father is constantly abandoning her mother, and can't understand why Betty stands by him despite his shortcomings.

Despite her misgivings, Julie goes to the dessert classes to discover that a) she does enjoy learning how to make sumptuous desserts, and b) her first love Michael Clayton, newly divorced, is also enrolled in the same class. Coincidence?

The rest of this sweet confection reads like a primer in dessert porn (but is thankfully calorie-free!) as Julie struggles to master elegant desserts. She also comes to grips with her bitter earlier falling-out with Michael, and she must step in when a family health crisis arrives. "Sweet Love" is a delightful read, the story of an overworked single mom looking for love and unexpectedly finding a connection to her own mother in the kitchen, the last place she ever planned on being.

Julie Mueller is a single working mom trying her best to juggle raising her teenage daughter and her career. She's also trying to be an adult woman with her mother, who sometimes treats her like a five year old girl. Her mom, Betty, means well though. She has the usual concerns most others have regarding their single daughters: please marry a nice man and allow him to take care of you and your daughter so I don't have to worry that you will be alone for the rest of your life!

As Betty starts to face her own mortality, she realizes she has one regret regarding her daughter: she sabotaged her crush with Michael, who was good friends with Julie's older brother. Trying to correct this mistake, she surprises Julie with cooking classes for her Mother's Day present. Problem is, Betty loves to cook, while Julie, well... does not. Julie doesn't want to hurt her mother's feelings so she agrees to go to at least one class, while thinking of excuses to get out of the remaining classes.

To Julie's surprise, her first true love, Michael is also in the class. Funny how old feelings can rapidly come back and fill you in the present. Both Michael and Julie will realize the intensity of their feelings.

I absolutely loved this book! Julie's relationship with her mother was honest and real. What Julie considered to be nagging, Betty thought she was just being concerned for her well-being. The book not only focused on Julie's relationship with her mom, but relationships in general. I especially liked the relationship between Julie and her daughter. Highly recommended.

4.5 Stars

I have but one word to describe Sarah Strohmeyer's Sweet Love: DELICIOUS. The novel was beautifully written, hilarious, at times tragic, and altogether wonderful. The desserts described in the novel complemented the overall sweetness of the book wonderfully. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the novel - though this is my first Sarah Strohmeyer, I can guarantee you that I will be picking up another one very soon.

Strohmeyer's exploration of love is the key to this book. She shows all aspects of it: motherly, daughterly, brotherly, sisterly, and romantic love. Everything is there, the highs and the lows. While she doesn't sugarcoat it, she has a way of presenting it that makes it all seem utterly sweet and delightful. Even at the lowest point of the book, the reader knows that everything will turn out okay. Strohmeyer's writing has that rarest of qualities which makes a reader forget that everything doesn't always turn out okay in the real world. In the world of her book, everything is sweet and delicious.

The characters are also extremely well-written. They are completely believable and the reader can relate to them instantly. Strohmeyer weaves the multiple storylines together flawlessly to create a coherent whole, without making it seem too cluttered or busy.

There isn't much more I can say about how much I loved this book, except that I wish you would see it for yourself - go fall in love with Michael and Julie, and make sure you have some cookies on hand while you do it!

This was quite an enjoyable book, hard to put down probably read within a couple of days, easy to read. Sarah Strohmeyer is highly recommended to anyone as an author - all her books have been enjoyable to read from Bubbles escapades to Sweet Love.

Sarah Strohmeyer's "Sweet Love" focuses on Julie Mueller, a single mom who works as a reporter for a local TV station. Julie's life centered around her work and taking care of her daughter and parents. Due to Julie's non-existing love life, her mother Betty, decided to enroll her in a dessert class hoping that Julie will reconnect with her first love and high school crush, Michael. Julie and Michael's relationship was strained due to a previous work-related misunderstanding. Things did not work out the way Betty thought, as Julie may be relocating to Washington D.C. for a network position, and Michael seemed to be involved with another woman.

I have read all of Sarah Strohmeyer's previous novels, and this was I thought her best effort. The main focus of the book was relationships - particularly between Julie and her mother. The romance between Julie and Michael was rather restrained, though more "realistic" between two older adults. This wasn't the best in the genre, but certainly above average. A good beach read.

This was a very informative book about the history and caring for a Maine Coom cat. This is one of three books that I ordered on the subject. I now feel that I am ready to obtain one of these beautiful animals.

A lot of ueful and interesting information in a compact book. A pity that more of the photographs were not in colour rather than B & W.

We recently purchased a Maine Coon kitten and found this book to be very informative. It has given us not only information for the care of our kitten, but gave us background info and info on what to expect as our kitten grows. I highly recommend this book to anyone who owns or is considering getting a Maine Coon.

This book was very informative for Maine Coon owners and lovers. The history and background of this breed was informative and impressive in detail. Maine Coon owners will learn a lot and give them more to admire in their very special cats. A winner of a book.

I bought this book due to the great reviews given by readers, but I cannot see what they are so excited about (Maybe they were the author's friends). The photographs are really poor (blurred, poorly lit) and only a few are in colour. I would have expected at least a clear description (with images) of the different colours Maine Coons available, but again here were only written descriptions. The text runs on an on with no apparent point to make. This was clearly written for purple haired ladies who attend cat shows and go on and on about standards, not a cat enthusiast who would like to learn and appreciate a specific breed.

This is a great personal history of the "back to the land" movement of the 70s and what happened to the folks who went there. I only wish there were a History Channel video version so I could show it to my younger friends who don't ever seem to have time to read. Some are, unfortunately, considering a similar path with many of the same unrealistic expectations. They call it "sustainability" these days but to far too many that buzzword is nothing more than the same old simplicity-lust that rears its longing head every every now and then in complex cultures. There is surely some path to a less hectic, more meaningful, more holistic life to be had than the conventional materialistic overachiever society we are (once again) ensconced in but my tongue-in-cheek advice to young friends, largely ignored, has been: "The 'simple life' isn't all that simple, the 'natural life' doesn't occur naturally, and the only real way to get 'back to the land' is through a six foot hole in the earth."

The author illustrates through stories about the lives of those who were there just how difficult it was to jump back into a more self-sufficient country life, especially as we had children who needed more social interfaces. Or as we just realized that getting sick, injured, and just plain older and feebler away from the protective elements of mainstream culture wasn't as great as it seemed when we were young, invincible, and blind with our own ideals. Maybe a few young people will actually read this book before taking a similar plunge and be better off for it. Forewarned is forearmed after all. I'd like to hope the new generation will find itself more prepared to create a better life by paying attention to what has gone before and what failed and succeeded.

Back in the 70's, I never dropped out of society and lived on the land, but I have friends that did .. and while they have some "conveniences" these days, to some degree they still lead the simple life. I am very much into voluntary simplicity but I never felt it should be so extreme. This was an awesome read that brought back many wonderful memories. At times, I was confused as to whether the author was talking first person or if she was quoting an interviewee, but despite that, the author did a great job of illustrating why folks dropped out and then what influences led them to come back to mainstream. Some of this I was exposed to ... some of this I lived ... but all of this book, I thoroughly enjoyed and I think you will, too.

Like an earlier reviewer stated, take it with a grain of salt. It is evident in this book that the author has a lot of nagative energy from her experiences attempting to homestead. It is well written, intersting and thought provoking. This book is worth reading if you would like a prespective of why homesteading did not work for many people.

One of the better books by former Hippies about the 60's and 70's. Well written and insightful. If you are really interested in the back to the land phenomenon and what it was really like this is highly recommended. If you want a light, "and then we all got stoned" sort of retrospective this will be too analytical but still interesting.

As oil and natural gas decline, many of us will have to go back to the land. There is something to learn from those who have tried this in the past. Although much has been said about why communes and Utopian communities failed, little has been written about the fate of individual homesteaders.

Part 1 is a book review of Agnew's very insightful history of this movement, and Part 2 is why I believe we need to go back to the land again and how to do it right this time given the problems and failures of homesteading in the `70s.

Part 1. Review of Agnew's "Back From the Land"

Eleanor Agnew, in her 2004 book, "Back from the Land. How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came Back", discusses the millions of young adults who tried homesteading. Agnew speaks from experience -- she went back to the land with her husband and two boys in Troy, Maine.

Agnew estimates between 750,000 and one million people dwelled on communes then. Millions more went back to the land independently. On the whole the movement consisted of educated, young, white, middle class men and women.

Their rejection of the current system wouldn't have been possible if the overall economy hadn't been so wealthy. It was a luxury to be able to experiment.

There were many reasons people went back to the land. The value system of American society was repulsive to many. They abhorred the rat race, boring jobs, crowds, the corrupt establishment; consumerism, destruction of wilderness, and advertising to get people to buy things they didn't need. Some also felt the need to "redeem their souls" because they'd done nothing to deserve the abundance they'd experienced. America has a long tradition of associating virtue with moderation, hard work, self-denial, and simple living. Many associated farming with the romantic notion of self-sufficient pioneers.

The oil crisis in 1973 led some to believe that the capitalist system was in imminent danger of collapse, so going back to the land would be a matter of survival.

Homesteaders wanted to invent a new and better civilization based on community, healthy food, a love of nature, and avoidance of toxic chemicals.

Many, if not most, were unrealistic about what it would take to make the urban to country transition.

Raising animals meant no days off, and the joy of raising them was shattered when they were slaughtered.

Farming was hard. Some bought land that was mostly rocks, which made building homes and starting gardens very hard. Good topsoil was washed away in storms. Then there were assaults by flies and no-see-ums, blistered hands, and aching muscles while tending crops, which in the end might be lost to drought, frost, hail, and pests. The surviving crops required hard work to harvest and prepare for storage.

In the winter, scraping ice off floors and walls, chopping wood, frozen pipes, broken cars, icy paths and roads, and uncovered wood piles frozen into a block of ice added to the discomfort and hard work.

Fires could be a problem if the wood hadn't been aged long enough - at least a year - because it didn't burn well and added creosote to the chimney - a fire hazard.

There were many new skills to master. Building a home, clearing the land, digging holes for the foundation through rock, fixing tractors, cars, chainsaws, chasing down escaped farm animals, cooking with wood, and canning food are just a few of the many skills needed to successfully homestead.

Although many had realized they'd be cash poor on the land, they hadn't thought of this as being real poverty. After all, they'd grow their own food, build their own homes, and trade with other community members for anything missing.

But they found out they couldn't be independent of the outside economy. Isolation meant even more dependence on cars, which were absolutely essential in the country, and repairs were expensive. People couldn't grow all of their own food and needed to get some items at the supermarket. And just about everything required money on the farm: seeds, animals, stoves, and so on.

People and publications made it seem easy to live off the land

Books like "Independence on a 5-acre Farm" made it seem like it was no big deal to go back to the land. Mother Earth News had articles such as "Raise Worms for Fun and Profit" that misled people into thinking they'd earn enough money on the farm to pay for necessities.

Eliot Coleman told people that they didn't need health insurance, and since everyone was young, healthy, and thought insurance companies were evil, they were glad to opt out. Agnew devotes a hair-raising chapter to how wrong Coleman was - just because you're young doesn't mean there won't be a need for emergency care, especially on a farm doing heavy manual labor, where the odds are many times higher than an office job that an accident will occur.

Health care was often poor in the country - there weren't enough doctors per capita.
Those who thought they could doctor themselves with herbs were sometimes dead wrong. Comfrey, which was supposed to cure just about everything, turns out to have liver damaging and carcinogenic effects. An alternative doctor prescribed Chinese herb cocktails that led to total kidney destruction in 100 women. Natural is not always better.

Scott and Helen Nearing were the role models for the back-to-the-land community. They built an ideal homestead working four hours a day, spending the rest of their time reading, playing music, etc. They made it seem possible to do this with very little cash.
But the Nearings made money from speaking, writing books, and donations. They had many followers who worked on their farm free of charge.

Thoreau made it sound easy to build a cabin and live in the wilderness. But the truth is, he was two miles from town, where he went nearly every day and visited friends, family, and where he dined out often.

Back From the Land - Why did people leave?

Economics. Many idealists had one-dimensional ideas about capitalism, that it was nothing but ruthlessness, and that they could avoid the capitalist system by becoming self-sufficient.

But Copthorne Macdonald believes alternative society never got large enough to separate from the mainstream society. You had to buy your tools at the hardware store since there weren't enough people making them on forges. The basic infrastructure of the economy forced people to buy outside the alternative lifestyle community. The bottom line is that small economies like communes and homesteads don't have the "size, complexity, cash flow, or diversity of goods and services to survive very well independently".

Doing something at home didn't pay well either. One farmer worked out he was making about ten cents an hour by the time he'd grown wheat and turned it into flour.

People had confused consumerism with cash - but even a sparse existence requires goods that can't be made or grown on the homestead.

To afford necessities and improvements, people found they had to take jobs that were boring, low paying, with no benefits, and sometimes dangerous. Those who'd thought their middle class careers were hard or dull discovered otherwise. Since most lived far out in the country, it wasn't usually possible to return to abandoned careers. By leaving homesteads to work outside, they lost the time and energy needed to make themselves self-sufficient - time versus money. They needed time to build homes and garden, but they needed money to buy cement and garden tools.

Homesteads failed as they tipped towards more time spent off the farm working than improving the homestead. People began to realize that rather than being homesteaders with outside jobs, they had awful jobs and happened to own a homestead. So many decided to return to the middle-class high-paying, rewarding careers they'd abandoned.

And many had no choice but to leave the land - they were bankrupt, out of savings if not deeply in debt. Many couples had children, and didn't feel it was fair to them to lead isolated lives on farms, far from good schools.

Divorce. Despite love being what the counterculture was all about, the reality of never-ending hard work, poverty, and lack of privacy in small cabins took a toll on marriages.
When a marriage failed, one partner usually had to quit the land and go back to civilization. The other partner often found someone who didn't want to homestead, or found no one and couldn't cope with all the work alone.

Commune failures. Meanwhile, people on communes were returning as well. Agnew lists these reasons for commune failures: lack of clear goals and structures, aggravations of shared space, irritating personal habits, and not liking each other once acquainted. Factions developed over all sorts of things - religion, politics, etc.

The "unanimous consent" nature of decisions also caused problems - either there was a hung jury or underground resistance. Mutual consent favors the verbally aggressive and quiet people lose out, but giving in all the time soon made the silent ones resentful.

New members threw communes off balance if they weren't screened well enough to see if they fit in.

Probably the most important factor that broke communes up was the resentment hard workers felt for slackers. People disagreed about work contributions and money making efforts. Those who worked hard didn't want to share money with those who didn't, and tried to get shirkers to work, but there was no way to enforce it, so these measures failed.

The Malthusian Die-off didn't happen. Back-to-the-landers hoped to escape the famine, overpopulation, war, and chaos that threatened to result from energy shortages and ecological destruction. But life went on, and friends and family on the outside were having it much easier, having more fun, living in warm homes, and leading far more interesting and intellectual lives in cities.

Fatigue. The novelty and idealism of hauling spring water in heavy buckets over rough ground, endlessly chopping wood, feeding fires all night and other hardships grew thin.

Conclusion. According to Jeffrey Jacob's research on the success rate of back-to-the-landers, only 3% subsisted on a combination of cash crops and bartering, only 2% through "intensive cultivation of cash crops". The others all found themselves preoccupied with money:
44% worked full-time away from homesteads
18% had pensions and investments
17% survived on part-time or seasonal work
15% got their income from businesses they could run from home

In the end they found they had to participate in the economy, capitalism infused every aspect of life and was beyond overthrowing or disregarding.

Part 2. Peak Energy: Time to Go Back Again

In the `70s, ecology, energy, population, and environment were common topics of conversation. Not anymore. It seems as if institutions and people have retreated from reality and reason. Environmental groups have abandoned population as an issue, even though they know it's responsible for all of the issues they're seeking donations for. In social networks, there's a taboo against discussion of ecological issues--the social pressures are to be witty and entertaining, yet another insidious influence of TV.

Most young people are aware they're being handed a crummy planet, but they have a vague sense of unease, not a fine-tuned understanding of the situation, because the vast majority don't read due to sedentary computer games, TV, and cell phones.

There's little awareness, as there was in the `70s, that a back to the land movement is even needed. If there were, would Generation Y, overweight and suffering from nature deficit disorder, be willing to be at the forefront of a growing return to agriculture?

Those who are aware, and would like to go back to the land, usually can't afford to buy a farm. Land is more expensive now than in the 70's because there are 100 million more of us, the majority immigrants and their children. We are losing land from development, erosion, and population at a rate where there won't be any crop land in 140 years.

Population has increased 2% a year since 1950, a rate 133 times faster than before fossil fuels powered civilization.
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One of the reasons we were even able to grow from 100 to 300 million people in only a century was to shift to vehicles from oxen and horses, which did the most brutal farm work and transportation. Not having to pasture oxen and horses on at least two acres per animal for labor and transport freed up a lot of land, which was then used to grow food for people and build suburbia on instead.

What needs to be done

Hirsch pointed out that you'd want to prepare for Peak Oil 30 years ahead of time with heavy oil, gas-to-liquids & liquefied natural gas, enhanced oil recovery, efficient vehicles, and coal liquids to mitigate the most critical weakness in our infrastructure: the utter dependence of combustion engines on liquid oil.

We don't have an alternative liquid fuel to replace oil, and it doesn't look like we'll have one for over a decade, if ever. Chris Somerville, head of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the joint $500 million collaboration between BP, U.C. Berkeley, LBNL, and the University of Illinois, has ruled out ethanol or biodiesel as potential biomass fuels. Instead, EBI is focused on researching how to make cellulosic biofuels from bio-diverse grasses with end-products of gasoline and diesel. Such fuels are at least 15 years away since there are so many problems to overcome. Dr. Somerville thought biofuels had more promise than solar and other alternatives (slides and lecture here).

Nearly everyone assumes that the next step is to throw huge amounts of money at energy research and building coal liquefaction and nuclear power plants, windmills, solar panels, and so on. Yet if all of the problems in all of these energy sources were solved today, there were enough engineers, and population growth stopped, it would still take decades to scale up enough to provide the same energy fossil fuels provide now.

And as Congressman Bartlett has pointed out, there's no point to all-out energy projects - because if we succeed, the population will double again, and the number of people experiencing hardship when the fuel runs out yet again will be even greater. Not to mention the continued destruction of fisheries, forests, and aquifers and potential extinction of humankind and other species from climate change by burning coal.

Even if an energy "Manhattan project" is attempted, we will also need to employ more people in agriculture to make up for the coming shortfall in energy. Changing agricultural methods and infrastructure takes decades as well.

The downshift from an industrial to an agricultural society must be funded by both government and private capital, because a huge amount of capital is needed.

Government needs to be in the driver's seat, since energy will need to be allocated across many other essential services besides agriculture, such as water purification, delivery, and treatment, garbage collection, military and police, roads, disaster recovery, and to keep our poorly maintained infrastructure from failing.

Educating and retraining people for coping with energy descent is essential. But since less than ten percent of Americans are scientifically literate, and any politicians who tried to educate Americans on how serious our energy and population situation is wouldn't get re-elected, it's unlikely any action will be taken at the top. The necessary changes and awareness will have to come from a grass roots movement of self-educated citizens.

The local food movement is one such effort. Many people are buying local organic food to encourage organic farming, assuming that capitalism will take care of the situation, because if we pay more for organic food, more people will become organic farmers.

But it's likely that once energy shocks hit, there'll be massive unemployment. People will have a hard time affording enough food, let alone farm land.

The local food movement also ignores the potentially higher amount of energy used to deliver local food. Mariola, in his paper "The Local Industrial Complex? Questioning the Sustainability of Local Foods", points out that energy used to move a large amount of food by ship or rail is probably less, due to economies of scale, than having hundreds of local farmers move tiny amounts of food to local markets which thousands of people drive to. Perhaps if customers walked, biked, took mass transit, the energy balance might be better, this needs to be researched further.

The most important lesson learned from the previous back-to-the-land movement is that we are all part of the capitalist system, and consequently, a new organic farming movement will not survive without government help. Large, industrial farms now depend on government help to some extent, and receive billions of dollars in subsidies. Over 5 million farmers were driven out of business against their will in the last century as farmers were forced to get bigger or go out of business. Now there are only 2 million farms left.

So the most critical reform would be to shift subsidies to organic Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and small farms, and to stop all development of prime farmland.

Making a downshift to agriculture will take many years to:
* Train enough people in soil science, plant propagation, integrated pest management, etc for outreach to farms to make the industrial-to-organic transition
* Shift people from ecologically unsustainable regions to food producing areas
* Improve topsoil. Industrial farming has ruined soil structure and nutrition. It will take at least five years to for soil to recover before organic food production gets back to previous levels.
* The learning curve for organic farming done in a sustainable way can take up to ten years.
* Plant forests to provide firewood, lumber, etc

The downshift needs to start now to mitigate suffering. Our nation needs to focus on a return to agriculture, not new energy infrastructure. To stay under the depletion curve, the number of people returning to the land to grow and distribute food needs to steadily increase.

As far as reducing the energy used in agriculture, we can start now by cutting back on calories, eat a vegetarian diet, grow victory gardens, use less packaging, etc. David Pimentel has a paper that will be published soon on how to cut the energy used in agriculture by half.

We need university students to major in agricultural disciplines, and above all, to try to shift mostly petrochemical and mechanization-oriented agriculture departments to teaching and researching sustainable farming methods. Cuba's success in coping with their downturn was partly due to having enough people trained in organic farming to train petrochemical farmers how to switch to organic methods.

The huge number of agricultural students we need doesn't exist. The Los Angeles Times article, "Agriculture schools Sprucing up their image", says that many professional agriculture workers in soil science, pest management, and growing crops are about to retire, but enrollment in these areas is declining.

Instead, students are majoring in professions that can easily be off-shored and will be useless in a world of declining energy.

Given the short window of time we have left, a better alternative than university agriculture departments would be John Jeavon's bio-intensive workshops, Rodale Institute programs, and gaining experience on sustainable organic farms (not all organic farms grow food with topsoil sustaining methods).

This time around, the model to follow for a group endeavor is already here - Community Supported Agriculture. Lazy members who don't farm their tract will earn far less than hard-working members. Pooling resources will be an advantage over individual farms, if the members can learn to get along, cooperate, and select good leaders.

CSA's and homesteads should be forming now, with a government agency acting as the central agent for connecting people who want to farm, providing agricultural scholarships, training, outreach, buying land and loaning money to farmers, and so on.

It will not be simple to make the transition. The easiest path is to ration the remaining oil to essential services like agriculture and continuing on as usual, not only to maintain social order, but to have food to export in exchange for oil and natural gas based fertilizers. Land will continue to be concentrated in a few hands, pushing society towards feudalism and fascism as people work for minimal wages to survive. Business as usual, until energy shortages cause sudden dislocations, leads to civil wars and collapse.

If the U-turn can start now, there's a better chance of remaining a strong democratic nation, and to finally do what we always should have done: live within our means -- what the ecosystem can provide sustainably.

There's no point trying to prepare for energy descent and climate change if the current levels of immigration, birth rate, and loss of prime farm land continues.

Everyone needs to get involved, because we're a social, cooperative species, utterly dependent on each other as much as bees or ants are. Peter Corning's brilliant book, "Nature's Magic", shows that synergy and cooperation at group levels were far more important in the emergence of homo sapiens than competition between individuals. We must all pull together and work towards the best possible future we can imagine, because we're all in this together.

It would be better if people chose an agricultural future with hope and courage. Farming can be an immensely satisfying and rewarding way of life. It would be best for democracy and preserving our remaining resources if Americans could embrace reality and take appropriate back-to-the-land action.

So far, it's only 2 books in the series, but I have really enjoyed reading both of them. I love how the author has worked in all the characters and hope for more development among them in future books. I look forward to the next Gray Whale Inn book.

This was a great read .. Am looking forward to more book's by this author .

I enjoyed the first book in this series (Murder on the Rocks) very much. This second offering does a great job of giving more background on the Cranberry Island residents and Natalie herself but the mystery itself falls flat. While the author throws around a lot of suspicion, the outcome itself seems quite random.

Its hard to say more without giving too much away (I hate reviews that do that) so I'll finish by saying I would recommend this if you really liked the first one and that I would read a third one if the author chooses to keep the series going.

I stumbled across the previous (and first) book in the "Gray Whale Inn" series -- "Murder on the Rocks" -- when looking at my Amazon recommendations. It looked so incredibly good, that I immediately picked up that book as well as this one (the second in the series). What a hit !!! Amazon didn't steer me wrong.

If you love cozy mysteries, you'll love this one ! I think it is one of the most well-done series I have read in awhile and I compare it to Cleo Coyle's Coffeehouse mysteries. The location of Cranberry Island, Maine is what really makes the book. The writing is so descriptive that I expected to see the coast of Maine outside my window when a stopped reading for a moment. The descriptions of the setting are so intriging that I actually spent some time looking on Google for information on the Cranberry Islands --- I was that fascinated!

If you love a good mystery --- If you love the coast of Maine ---- If you love B&B's ----- this series is for you !!!!

Natalie Barnes is facing the beginnings of the off season. With few bookings at her bed and breakfast over the winter months, she's hoping to make ends meet. But that soon becomes the least of her worries. A stranger noise is waking her up in the middle of the night. Is her inn haunted? Her ex-fiancee has shown up as a guest, wanting another chance at making their relationship work.

But more troubling is the death of Polly Sarkes. Polly had lived on the island her entire life and helped with the laundry at the Gray Whale Inn. When she appears to vanish, Natalie goes to her house and finds her dead, an apparent suicide. At least that's what the sheriff quickly rules it, but Natalie isn't so sure. Her friend had too much life. Beside, she was in the middle of packing a suitcase. Natalie quickly learns that Polly was the only hold out in a deal to sell some land for a new development. Was that the motive for her murder?

I enjoyed the first in this series, so I was looking forward to this one. I was glad to join these characters again. After two books, they already feel like old friends. And the recipes at the back sound wonderful again.

On the whole, the plot was great with plenty of twists that kept me turning pages. I do have a couple complaints about it, however. Murder related to development on the island was the plot of book number one. I was disappointed to see that play such a prominent part of this book. Additionally, the ending, while satisfying, was rushed.

These complaints weren't enough to keep me from enjoying the book, however. I'm already booking my next stay at the Gray Whale Inn.