The Country of the Pointed Firs
Sarah Orne Jewett’s finest work is less a novel than a series of linked sketches, drawn from a summer on the coast of Maine. The unnamed narrator, a writer from the city, takes lodgings with Almira Todd, a widowed herb-gatherer whose kitchen becomes a doorway into the life of the fishing village of Dunnet Landing. Little happens in the way of plot. Instead there are visits, remembered stories, a family reunion, and long afternoons with sea captains and solitary islanders growing old at the edge of the water. Quiet and closely observed, it stands as a lasting portrait of a fading New England world. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.
About the Author
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was an American writer from South Berwick, Maine, and a leading figure in the local color movement. Her fiction preserved the speech, landscapes, and vanishing ways of coastal New England, and she influenced later writers including Willa Cather.
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