The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

In 1896, at the age of forty-seven, Sarah Orne Jewett published her finest work, The Country of the Pointed Firs, about a woman writer who retreats one summer to Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacost town, to find seclusion to do her work. In the novel and stories collected here, Jewett explores the world of the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous coastal towns, offering a detailed view of lives molded by the long Maine winters, by the surrounding rock-filled fields, and by strong, resourceful women. “It is,” admired Rudyard Kipling, “the very life.”