Down East In The Ocean

This clever counting book from the award-winning authors of Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie, combines rhyme with a fun exploration of Maine sea life. Children will be singing it to themselves and asking for it to be read to them again and again.

From the first explorers, to the century of ships, to our modern fisheries and diversification, Maine's maritime story is told in engaging detail. Lincoln Paine has laid down the framework for an understanding of Maine's maritime history by relating the population and landscape of today to their historic foundations. This engaging overview of Maine’s maritime history ranges from early Native American travel and fishing to pre-Plymouth European settlements, wars, international trade, shipbuilding, boom-and-bust fisheries, immigrant quarrymen, quick-lime production, yachting, and modern port facilities, all unfolding against one of the most dramatic seascapes on the planet. Down East can be read in an evening but will be referred to again and again. When the first edition was published in 2000, Walter Cronkite—a veteran Maine coastal sailor as well as The Most Trusted Man in America—wrote that “Paine’s economy of phrase and clarity of purpose make this book a delight.” Paine went on to write his monumental opus The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (PW starred review), but now returns to his first and most abiding love, the coast of Maine, to revise and update this gem of a book. The new edition is printed in a large, full-color format with a stunning complement of historical photos, paintings, charts, and illustrations, making this a truly visual journey along a storied coast.

The Maine lobsterboat is known and admired all over the country. This is a book on how to build one of these beautiful boats from start to finish. Over the years, many hundreds of these craft have been built so hat the methods of construction details have been worked out and refined to an unusual degree. For their size, these lobseterboats withstand some of the harshest possible use, as most of them fish all winter off the stormy coast of Maine. Such a boat has to be good to survive. There are differences in the boats from one part of the coast to another, and from one boat to another within an area. But the boats from Beals Island and Jonesport have always been highly regarded, especially for their graceful good looks and high speed. The late Will Frost’s boats were always advanced for their day, and it was not at all strange that during Prohibition his shops on Beals Island and Jonesport were engaged to build some fast, high-powered rumrunners. His influence has much to so with the modern Maine lobsterboat as we know it today. Not a little of Will Frost’s thinking about lobsterboats was passed on to his grandson Royal Lowell, the author of this book.

Antique print dealer Maggie Summer’s Maine vacation is unexpectedly interrupted when she finds herself the heir to four generations of family secrets involving unrequited love, jealousy, art-and murder. In the summer of 1890, two young women posed for artist Winslow Homer on the coast of Maine. What happened that summer, the secrets the women kept, and the lies they told, changed their families forever. Now, more than a hundred years later, one of their descendants has been murdered, leaving to antique print dealer Maggie Summer the family papers that may finally reveal the truth. Maggie's vision of a relaxing vacation in Maine -- antiquing with beau Will Brewer and visiting his Aunt Nettie -- turns into a murder investigation. Maggie must discover which of the family myths are based on reality, before someone she cares about becomes the next victim.

In this meditation on religion and science, Lightman explores the tension between our yearning for permanence and certainty, and the modern scientific discoveries that demonstrate the impermanent and uncertain nature of the world. As a physicist, he has always held a scientific view of the world. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea he was overcome by the sensation that he was merging with a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute and immaterial. This is his exploration of these seemingly contradictory impulses, and the journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of his quest. -- adapted from publisher info.

In Downeast, Gigi Georges follows five girls as they come of age in one of the most challenging and geographically isolated regions on the Eastern seaboard. Their stories reveal surprising truths about rural America and offer hope for its future. “It’s almost impossible not to care about these fierce young women and cheer for their hard-won successes” (Kirkus) in this “heartfelt portrait” and “worthy tribute” (Publishers Weekly). Nestled in Maine’s far northeast corner, Washington County sits an hour’s drive from the heart of famed and bustling Acadia National Park. Yet it’s a world away. For Willow, Vivian, Mckenna, Audrey, and Josie—five teenage girls caught between tradition and transformation in this remote region—it is home. Downeast follows their journeys of heartbreak and hope in uncertain times, creating a nuanced and unique portrait of rural America with women at its center. Willow lives in the shadow of an abusive, drug-addicted father and searches for stability through photography and love. Vivian, a gifted writer, feels stifled by her church and town, and struggles to break free without severing family ties. Mckenna is a softball pitching phenom whose passion is the lobster-fishing she learned at her father’s knee. Audrey is a beloved high school basketball star who earns a coveted college scholarship but questions her chosen path. Josie, a Yale-bound valedictorian, is determined to take the world by storm. All five girls know the pain and joy of life in a region whose rugged beauty and stoicism mask dwindling populations, vanishing job opportunities, and pervasive opioid addiction. As the girls reach adulthood, they discover that despite significant challenges, there is much to celebrate in “the valley of the overlooked.” Their stories remind us of the value of timeless ideals: strength of family and community, reverence for nature’s rule, dignity in cracked hands and muddied shoes, and the enduring power of home. Revealed through the eyes of Willow, Vivian, Mckenna, Audrey, and Josie, Downeast is based on four years of intimate reporting. The result is a beautifully rendered, emotionally startling, and vital book. Downeast will break readers’ hearts yet offer them hope, providing answers to what the future may hold for rural America.

The story of those who inhabited coastal Maine thousands of years before the French arrived, and how their lives changed at the dawn of the seventeenth century. In 1604, when Frenchmen landed on Saint Croix Island, they were far from the first people to walk along its shores. For thousands of years, Etchemins—whose descendants were members of the Wabanaki Confederacy—had lived, loved and labored in Down East Maine. Bound together with neighboring people, all of whom relied heavily on canoes for transportation, trade, and survival, each group still maintained its own unique cultures and customs. After the French arrived, though, these indigenous people faced unspeakable hardships, from “the Great Dying,” when disease killed up to ninety percent of coastal populations, to centuries of discrimination. Yet they never abandoned Ketakamigwa, their homeland. In this book, anthropologist William Haviland relates the challenging history endured by the natives of the Down East coast and how they have maintained their way of life over the past four hundred years. Includes illustrations

“I love everything about this hilarious book except the font size.” —Jon Stewart Although his career as a bestselling author and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was founded on fake news and invented facts, in 2016 that routine didn’t seem as funny to John Hodgman anymore. Everyone is doing it now. Disarmed of falsehood, he was left only with the awful truth: John Hodgman is an older white male monster with bad facial hair, wandering like a privileged Sasquatch through three wildernesses: the hills of Western Massachusetts where he spent much of his youth; the painful beaches of Maine that want to kill him (and some day will); and the metaphoric haunted forest of middle age that connects them. Vacationland collects these real life wanderings, and through them you learn of the horror of freshwater clams, the evolutionary purpose of the mustache, and which animals to keep as pets and which to kill with traps and poison. There is also some advice on how to react when the people of coastal Maine try to sacrifice you to their strange god. Though wildly, Hodgmaniacally funny as usual, it is also a poignant and sincere account of one human facing his forties, those years when men in particular must stop pretending to be the children of bright potential they were and settle into the failing bodies of the wiser, weird dads that they are.

Travel just a few miles beyond Acadia National Park and you will find a little known and seldom visited patchwork of quaint fishing villages, rocky coastlines, wild blueberry fields, and vast stretches of forestland reaching all the way to the Canadian border, a hundred miles away. Beyond Acadia: Exploring the Bold Coast of Down East Maine is a travel guide that brings together, for the first time, the amazing opportunities to enjoy a day or a week in Down East Maine, leaving the crowds and traffic of Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island behind. Here you will find trails on The Bold Coast overlooking cliffs that plunge a hundred feet to the crashing surf below, quiet country roads winding through the forest, picturesque villages, art galleries, breweries, wineries, farm stands, campgrounds and inns. What you won’t find are t-shirt shops, traffic jams, or overcrowded hiking trails. Beyond Acadia is an engaging and informative guide to this relatively undiscovered area east of Ellsworth and Winter Harbor, stretching to the Canadian border. Compelling photos, clear maps and an easy to understand format will make the book indispensable for people who long to take their Maine experience “beyond Acadia,” both literally and figuratively.

Penelope Down East is a collection of stories about sailing the Maine coast in a small catboat with no engine. This is cruising the way it was done a hundred years ago—and it takes a high level of seamanship to get anywhere. If the wind or the tide is against you, you must adapt, change plans, tack all day, or hole up in a harbor and wait for better conditions. It makes for delightfully unpredictable adventures. Cheney’s writing style is clear and familiar, like the old salt at the dock spinning yarns of his many voyages. He loves and appreciates all the beauties, big and small, of the Maine coast, and of his faithful boat. This book will appeal to native Mainers and to sailors anywhere in the world. --- “Bill Cheney is a fine sailor, storyteller, and wordsmith. Put together, it’s no surprise that he has given us a fine collection of sailing stories. If you have heard much about cruising the fabled coast of Maine and, as yet, have never done so, here is the vicarious experience you have been waiting for. If you have cruised this iconic, watery world, as I have, and want a companion to share many of your favorite bays, islands, harbors . . . and to introduce you to new experiences and places . . . here you will find your soul mate and guide.” —Roland Sawyer Barth, author of Tales of the Intracoastal Waterway: An Account of a Passage from the Florida Keys to Cape Cod in a Seventeen Foot Catboat “Bill Cheney is a skilled mariner and an even better essayist. His descriptions of life aboard an engineless catboat along the rugged Maine coast are vivid, tender, poetic, and sometimes wildly humorous. He speaks to us in every key. There is no one quite like him.” —Clinton Trowbridge, author of The Boat That Wouldn’t Sink and The Crow Island Journal ----- E-book bonus: All the photos and charts, of which there are many, are in full color in the e-book. ------