If you look closely at a map of the coast of Maine, you will notice the 'fingers' of granite points thrusting downward into the Atlantic Ocean. Those points were caused by a mighty glacier that scraped across Maine eons ago. "The rocky coast of Maine" is just that. I remember scraping my legs on barnacles when I swam off the three round rocks standing side by side along the shore of the cottage where I grew up during the summers. Back then, I couldn't be a year-rounder. It is admirable that families have done it for generations.

The fingers of rock, ledge, and stubborn forests determined to plant themselves down to where they can get the best view shelter the people more determined than the trees and the rocks to live there and make a living from the sea. Some of the families settled there a couple hundred years back. Their enclaves are self-contained, self-reliant, and somewhat isolated, although the advent of the Internet and cell towers has affected them, like anyone else. Now, someone hauling all day can dock the boat, walk up the ramp from the wharf, and sit down with a PBR and Game of Thrones.

I've had people (teachers in particular) worry about Florine when she quits high school in my first book, Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea. During the 1960s, when I was a townie in Bath, Maine (Long Reach - its original name) and going to what we then called Junior High, several groups of kids from the surrounding rural areas where farming and fishing were the order of the day, came and went. It was not surprising to lose fellow students whenever they could legally leave school. They expected to be farmers or fishermen, or fisher or farmer wives. That Florine quit school would not have been shocking, although disappointing.

There are also questions about why I haven't written more about the political turmoil that was happening during the 1960s. The reason is that, from inside Florine's head, what is going on in her world is enough. The events outside her little village are dimly noted and have little personal effect on her or her loved ones. In Written on My Heart, the Vietnam war comes into play through Glen's joining the army. Personal events often trump what's going on in the larger scheme.

I am sitting at a table watching the New Meadows River in West Bath roll by while the wind blows about 50 mph bursts. I am comfortable in a year-round house with heat, running water, the necessities. I can glance outside and take in the romance of it all instead of judging the roughness of the waters should I choose to take the boat out in this weather. The residents see it differently. It's life, it's making a living in a tough, dangerous way, and it's damn hard work. It's living life out loud, as Emile Zola may have put it.