Edge of Maine (Directions)
Novelist and biographer Wolff is ultimately apologetic about this patchy little travelogue, confessing that, really, he covers only part of one edge of a state with at least three. He ignores Maine's borders with New Hampshire and two Canadian provinces, writing about only the middle of Maine's famously rock-bound seaboard, which is what he knows from years of coasting along it. No apology is necessary. Sure, he skips from history to memoir to reportage so abruptly that it nearly causes whiplash. On the other hand, this is all good stuff: the story of Maine's first, failed colony, founded in 1607; Wolff and his young family's frightening night at sea in deep fog; the ways of Maine's best boat restorer and proprietor of its most fabulous boatyard; the legends of the greatest potential environmental disasters averted in Maine since 1970; the seemingly perennial clashes between poor year-round Mainers and wealthy, often officious "rusticators" (e.g., the Cabots, John Travolta) from elsewhere. One wishes only that the book were even more chock-full of interest.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved