About a month ago I received a package in the mail from my sister who lives in Colorado. I was puzzled when I opened it and found a tattered, blue, worn out book with yellowing pages that had been published in 1946. I called my sis saying, “What the heck?”
She told me she thought I might like it, and that she knew it would be hard for me to find a copy on my own since none of Ruth Moore’s books are available at most libraries, on Libby, or on Audible.
Well, she was absolutely correct! I loved it! This story held me in a spell and carried me away from all the current worries of the world and into the 1930s and the lives of a handful of families living on the beautiful remote island of Spoonhandle off the coast of Maine.
The characters were well developed and believable, the use of language was rich and engaging. (I swear could hear the waves and smell the salty wind rolling in on the coast.) Amidst the charm and humor of the story, the plot touched on issues relevant today, and possibly forever: How do we treat people who look or live differently from ourselves? Is the development of land progressive or destructive for a community? What is a community’s responsibility for assisting troubled youth? How does gossip and the exclusion of some affect the community at large?
When there were only about ten pages left in the book, I stopped reading for a couple days because I just didn’t want the story to end.
I finally did finish it, and when I did, I proceeded to order six more shabby, tattered, worn out books by Ruth Moore. I can’t wait for them to arrive!
An excerpt from p. 257-8:
“ Winter is a time of gear overhauling in the fish houses, snug with fires built in oil drum stoves, of building traps and painting bouys, of mending the dragnet that the shark tore through. The shark himself is keen in the memory and the gaping hole he made is here and now. But the warm weather, the summertime, lost in the blizzard that drives the small drift under the windowsill, is as unreal as a ghost until it comes again. The talk above the tapping hammers is gusty and loud, but to a man going home to supper, walking through the snowy twilight is like walking through a dream, and the house looming in blown whiteness is a house of sleep.
Winter is the time of wood cutting, the hollow thung of the axes like bells among the tree boles; the clean track of the wood sled and the brown dung of the horses in the snow; the frosty maple-butt flying apart on the chopping block at the touch of the ax.
In the early mornings, blue with snow and coming late, the deer comes to the orchard, digging with her cold hooves for the frozen buried apples; and in the time after the gear is overhauled and the wood is cut and the boat is painted, content comes out or loneliness bites deep, depending on whether people are content or lonely.”