Books About Place

Defining terms:

(Place) Location, landscape, Maine, and more, houses, homes, a mountain, a sea, a complicated and dynamic web of relationships within a geography, a set of circumstances to which you belong, the local and the specific, the internal world turned external, puddles, forests, the early morning dew.

Above the Gravel Bar
With this book you can put your canoe in a nearby river and travel prehistoric Maine’s Native American canoe routes.

Aliens and Fakes
An untangling of popular, often fantastical, beliefs about the origins of people in the ancient Americas.

At the Place of
Lobsters and Crabs
For thousands of years, native people lived on Deer Isle and the surrounding islands. This is their history.

Breckinridge Long: American Eichmann???
The extent of Long’s efforts to impede immigration to safe harbor in the U.S.A. for Jews and gentiles alike is uncovered.

Clipper and the
Village Park Bully
Our favorite Deer Isle puppy visits the park for the first time. He’s excited to make new friends, but then park bully snarls at him.

Clipper’s ABC’s
Journey with Clipper, the adorable Maine island puppy, as he takes children into his world, while teaching the ABC’s in English, French, Spanish, and Japanese

Clipper’s the Boss
Clipper the Deer Isle puppy thinks it’s best to be boss but quickly learns being in charge has its downsides. Beautifully illustrated, warmly told.

Conversations with Quetzalcoatl
A humorous, lighthearted story about pre-Columbian culture, with flashes of fantasy.

Egg Time in Augusta
Depicts life in Augusta through three narrative perspectives that challenge and highlight cross-cultural insights.

Exile Space
Pasztory’s fourteenth book is a mix of memoir, essay and fiction about her own past and America’s.

Growing up on an Island in Maine
There are many books about the islands off the Maine coast, but few by authors raised on one. This book is an exception.

Journal of a 2nd Lieutenant in Iraq
White recalls his deployment as a 2nd Lieutenant in Maine’s 133rd National Guard Engineer Battalion

Moods and Memories
Poetry that merges Russian and American traditions.

More Than a Teardrop in the Ocean Vol I
The War Refugee Board saved over 200,000 lives during the Holocaust. This is the history of its extraordinary work.

More Than a Teardrop in the Ocean Vol II
The second book in Rolde’s comprehensive history of the War Refugee Board.

Madalynn the
Monarch Butterfly
Journey with Madalynn as she migrates to Mexico. Madalynn encounters a variety of birds on her travels.

Your Maine Lands
A master Maine guide introduces the free amenities of the nearly one million acres of Maine’s public lands, including hunting and fishing.

A Myth of Messina
An autobiographical novel of growing up in the Russian community of Richmond, Maine.

Nine Lives
on the Street
A pampered pet’s luxurious lifestyle comes to an abrupt end and he is suddenly forced to live by his wits on the streets of NYC.

On Point
Perspectives from an emerging generation of elected officials.

One Dream and
Collected Stories
Stories by young people in Maine about the affects of alcohol abuse on their lives.

One Good Thing
Mac McCabe, the owner of Allagash Air, flies his customers into the Maine wilderness to unforgettable experiences.

Penobscot Traditions
A realistic imagining of Penobscot Indian life in the Maine woods before Europeans arrived, based on research by Nicholas N. Smith, PhD.

Piecing
Scattered Souls
Memoir written by the child of a Holocaust survivor.

The Poems of Maria Caridad Lara Sciaky
Poetry about nature by a spirit unafraid of powerful and enduring literary fashions and taboos.

Project Omaha Beach
This is a group of blocks in columns. Column layouts can be adapted to fit different needs.

The Proud and
the Immortal
This is a group of blocks in columns. Column layouts can be adapted to fit different needs.

Real Political Tales
Humorous stories about Maine bi-partisan politics by a veteran politician. Based on the author’s life.

Coastal Maine in
Words and Art

Seventeen writers tell stories about the Maine coast with depth, insight, candor, irony,
wit and humor.

Three Hundred
Years in Thirty
A mixture of personal recollection and ethnohistory of the Mistassini people.

To Denmark, With Love
Year after year, Denmark has been rated highest for happiness and quality of life. What’s their secret?

Unicycle
The discovery of universal human rights in the ethics of nature.

Venice and the Water
An analysis of the complex relationship between Venice and its environment, with an eye toward current climate issues.

A Voice for the Redwoods
Follow the life story of a California Redwood, told through its eyes, from ancient America to now.

The Way Things Were
Stories and essays that portray life on Deer Isle, Maine during the steamboat era, the 1840s until 1942.

Welcome Radio
Lifelong DJ Annie Stillwater Gray recreates her ten-year radio program in this novel about the northern Maine border town of Angels’ Notch.

Winnie and Tate
Two ducks find their way to a new home. As Winnie and Tate’s world expands in the backyard woodland pond, so does their circle of friends.

A Winter Apprentice
Insights into life in a Maine boatyard, where Willey worked and kept a journal from 1978-79.

Wisdom of Bear
Humorous, original, and moving tales about our relationship to nature, based on mythology.

Woodland of Weir
A future America emerges from catastrophe and upheaval after a failed attempt to destroy Halley’s comet.

What the Farmer Told the Bard
Pagan gods take the stage as runes encoded in a monument come to life, and the planet slides into chaos in the grip of an extraterrestrial media takeover.

Yoganomics
The environment’s rhythmic polarity for the health of the economy is introduced step by step with the ancient sutra.

Coastal Maine in
Words and Art
Seventeen writers tell stories about the Maine coast with depth, insight, candor, irony,
wit and humor.


Places we know, a little more deeply than in passing
  • Solon, Maine
  • Los Angeles, California
  • Devon, U.K.
  • London, England
  • Cork, Ireland
  • Providence, Rhode Island
  • New York, New York
  • Long Island, New York
  • Humacao, Puerto Rico
  • Farjardo, Puerto Rico
  • Kyoto Japan
  • Portland, Maine
  • Rockland, Maine
  • Boston, Massachusetts
  • Amherst, Massachusetts
  • The Upper
    Mississippi River
Words on place from authors all about place

To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain.

-Nan Shepherd,
The Living Mountain

This was water straight from the mountain that sends your blood surging and crams every capillary with a belt of adrenaline, dispatching endorphins to seep into the seats of pleasure in body and brain, so that your soul goes soaring, and never quite settles all day.

-Roger Deakin,
Waterlog
Questions for you to reflect or use as writing prompts

What landscapes do you remember the most clearly? Which ones fade? Can you recall a time when a place came back to you through a scent? What scent? Where do you feel most at home? Most yourself? Most loved? Where do you feel most alone? Most like a ghost? Most the person you want to be? Most comfortable?

%d bloggers like this: