Category: Book Review

Book jacket detail.

Working Waterfront

Trail death probed with obsessive detail

Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders By Kathryn Miles; Algonquin Books of Ch2022; $28.95. Review by Dana Wilde Kate Miles arrived at Unity College in 2001 as a writing instructor and a backpacking enthusiast at a school devoted to backpacking. She’d heard that a Unity student and… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Chris Van Dusen does it again

Big Truck, Little Island By Chris Van Dusen (Candlewick Press, 2022) Review by Carl Little Grandchildren Maria, 9, Serita, 8, and James, 5, are children’s book author/illustrator Chris Van Dusen aficionados. Allow Gahbi (their nickname for this grampa) to boast a bit: they’ve memorized The Circus Ship, made up music… SEE MORE
Peter Kilgore

Working Waterfront

Peter Kilgore’s island poetry

[caption id="attachment_31703" align="alignleft" width="350"] Peter Kilgore[/caption] In some alternate history of Casco Bay, Peter Kilgore is the poet laureate of Long Island. His terse, descriptive lyrics written during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s evoke so purely the sights, sounds, and sensibilities of the island as experienced by human beings, if… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A prince of tides builds his own pools

Life Between the Tides By Adam Nicolson (2021) Review by Tina Cohen Adam Nicolson is a British writer with who’s written on history, landscape, and literature, so it is no surprise that his book seemingly focused on coastal ecology— life between the tides—would include those other interests as well. He… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A survey of recent Maine settlement

Sideshots: Stories from a Land Surveyor’s Traverse through the District of Maine By John T. Mann, illustrated by Earle Mitchell (2020) Review by Dana Wilde In the 1970s, Maine was changing, especially along the coast. After nearly a century of being a summer destination for tourists and hideout for the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

How anti-government sentiment was harnessed

At War with Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump By Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris; Columbia University Press University of Maine political science professor Amy Fried’s new book concerns a pattern in recent political history you may very well think quite familiar. At War with Government:… SEE MORE