Books : Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life Photographs by Peter Ralston With a Foreword by Philip W. Conkling
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.145
EAN num: 9781584656975
ISBN number: 1584656972
Label: UPNE
Manufacturer: UPNE
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 184
Printing Date: April 30, 2008
Publishing house: UPNE
Sale Popularity Level: 293135
Studio: UPNE
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Located off the southwest coast of Mount Desert Island in Maine, Gotts Island, a mile across and three miles round, is ringed with bright granite--a 'rock bound belt' that suggests concreteness, independence, and separation from the sea around it. But no island, no place, ever stands alone and unchanging. The small, close-knit community established on Gotts Island in the late eighteenth century disappeared in the twentieth, leaving behind mere traces, names on the cemetery stones. In its wake came the summer people, returning year after year, with 'bags, bundles, and memory.'
Having purchased the house of poet and writer Ruth Moore in 1965, Christina Gillis has been a summer resident of Gotts Island for more than forty years. Each summer she and her husband, John, arrive with their books, projects, and lives. On the island they watched their young sons, Chris and Ben, turn from 'two small blond boys in high-top overalls' to 'shirtless adolescents' and finally to young men.
But the place that was a constant center in their lives, that nourished them and their friendships with visitors and neighbors, assumed a more profound significance for the Gillis family in 1992 when they buried the ashes of their son Ben in the island cemetery. Ben had been killed seven months earlier while flying a small plane in Kenya. In the cemetery overlooking the sea, once the heart of the village and still central to the community, he joined generations of earlier islanders to become a 'name in stone.'
In this elegant and gentle memoir of place and experience, the author takes the reader on a tour of the island, making connections between its stark physical beauty, its known and unknown places, and the decades of memories and myths it encompasses. Gillis describes the social role of the dock, the portal for arrivals and departures that are so important to island life; she traverses the pathways that cross the Island, offering up its topographical intricacies and secrets; and she revisits the cemetery that, though bounded by its fence, shares a field with the annual Fourth of July softball game. A location of loss is also a place of life.
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This book is beautifully written and describes parts of island life from a summer resident's point of view, in addition to the deep feelings caused by the loss of a son who is now buried on the island and has, thus, become part of the island's history. Amazingly, there is nothing sentimental about this book; just heartfelt. Highly recommended to anyone who shares an interest in Maine's island heritage, or summer residents' place in it, or how one family has coped with their personal loss and incorporated it into Maine island culture. Thank you for sharing these very personal feelings and stories with a larger audience.
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