As a former Resident of Bar Harbor from 1975-1998 i find this a wonderful book for anyone who likes small town life. Plus most of my friends were in there at one time or another. Its a great insight into the Bar Harbor of the 70's and 80's in the Pre tourist trap years.

Bizarre and sublime bits of true life humor that only a small town can provide. I open it to any page for a poop long chuckle.

This book is a collection of police reports from Mount Desert Island, Maine, home of Acadia National Park. Some are very funny!

I've never been one to enjoy reading historical writings very much, but I loved this book. Ruth searched and found many great writings, along with photos to go with them, that tell the stories of early settlers, the "cottagers" and the year round residents of Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor/Acadia is my favorite spot in New England and we will return their again this summer. I will have a better appreciation of the life these people lived in the late 1800s and will better appreciate how fortunate we are to have Acadia as protected natural lands.

An entertaining novel exploring high society life in Bar Harbor at the start of WWI when a German passenger liner is obliged to find a neutral port when hostilities break out between Germany, England and France.

Billed as a love story, that may be a bit of a stretch. The arrival of the ship is a fact; the characters that populate the novel are fictional creations and their courtships seem a lot more like business arrangements than love affairs. If anything, the real love may be between the town and the ship!

In this novel the characters who are in love are too often not developed fully so their motivations remain unclear. A number of other characters are vividly created (especially the grand dame of the novel and, by extension, Bar Harbor in 1914), so the author clearly has the ability to round them out.

I liked the book, just felt it was perhaps more spare than necessary.