MAINE MEMORIES by Elizabeth Coatsworth (The...

MAINE MEMORIES by Elizabeth Coatsworth (The Countryman Press: 10.95). These short, personal essays about life in rural Maine have been collected from two of the author’s popular books published during the ‘40s. Coatsworth and her husband left New York for an early 19th-Century farmhouse on Damariscotta Pond: “I like to live in rooms which have been seasoned by human experiences for a hundred years.” Unlike many urban writers who retire to the country, she had an eye for the details of New England life that went beyond the shopworn themes of autumn leaves and old stone walls. She traces the idiosyncrasies of local pronunciations, recounts the traditions surrounding a pair of ghosts said to inhabit the nearby woods and describes her wonder at the exquisite stone tools found in Indian shell mounds. Her warm, respectful accounts of the land and people echo the spirit of an inscription she found in a house in nearby Waldboro: “I. G. Reed built this house 1814-1816/ Inhabited it April 1816/ He wishes health, prosperity and contented minds to all his successors.”