Jerome describes the great Adirondack resorts and summer homes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and genteel summer residents like Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes, who once received a telegram from her son saying that he was bringing 96 friends to their home that evening. Paul Smith, who ran the grandest of the Adirondack hotels at the northernmost point of the route traveled by both Sears and Jerome, was known for his shrewd exploitation of his upper-crust clientele. A clerk at the resort's store once reported to Smith that someone had charged a pair of boots, but he forgot who the customer was. Ned Buntline, author of a string of trashy 19th-century novels about the West, was another Adirondack character, albeit a loathsome one. Buntline, whose real name was Edward Zane Carroll Judson, did his drinking for a spell at a cabin on Eagle Lake, once reportedly a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Weeds push up flagstones, moss colonizes a shingle roof, wind and rain splinter clapboard walls.
Floors sag, joists dry into powder, sills warp, nails fall, and soon there are only wild blackberries nodding in sunny cellar holes. The woman can write. The writing, in fact, is a constant pleasure. Jerome has a style that suits her subject, quiet and gentle as a paddle in still water. She delivers her lore with wit and whimsy, with fine descriptions and without shrill preaching or righteous posturing.