Maine Books: The Best Books Set in the Pine Tree State

Book Summary

In the late 1700s, women were expected to be seen and not heard. But, midwife Martha puts what is right over society’s expectations. When the Kennebec River freezes, a man is entombed in the ice. Martha is called to determine the cause of death.

Months earlier, the man had been accused of rape, and Martha believes he has now been murdered. But, the local physician disagrees and declares the death an accident.

Over the winter, Martha continues to investigate every angle as the trial approaches. The diary she uses to log every birth and death becomes a key component and soon implicates those she loves, leaving Martha with an impossible decision.

Book Summary

Agnes and Polly have been best friends for generations. They are also part owners of a land trust for a peninsula of land on the Maine coast known as Fellowship Point.

The two friends have led very different lives. Agnes is a celebrated author of children’s books. Additionally, she wrote a series of novels under a pseudonym. Polly has three adult sons and is married to a professor with an inflated sense of ego.

Now in her eighties, Agnes wants to ensure that Fellowship Point will be permanently protected by donating the land to a trust. But doing so requires dissolving the generations-old partnership among the shareholders. Polly finds herself torn between the wishes of Anges and those of her sons.

When a book editor tries to convince Agnes to write her memoirs, long-buried secrets have repercussions for all of them.

Book Summary

Picture-perfect couple Harriet and Wyn met in college and have been an inspirational duo ever since. But, as their annual week-long Maine vacation with their best friends approaches, they have a big decision to make. Do they finally confess that they broke up six months ago and still haven’t managed to tell their best friends?

The cottage they visit each year is being sold, and it’s the last time they’ll all be together in their sacred spot. It feels wrong to ruin the whole mood with their bad news. So Harriet and Wyn decide they can surely fake being in love for one week. After all, they’ve had years of practice.

This book alternates between chapters titled “Happy Place,” through which you see Harriet and Wyn’s relationship from and grow through the years in Maine, and chapters titled “Real Life” where you see them in the current broken-up status.

Book Summary

This atmospheric novel takes place in a small coastal town in Maine, and is inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting, Christina’s World.

Christina Olson was born at the austere home on a barren hill in Cushing, Maine, that her family had inhabited for generations. After nearly dying as a child and being incapacitated by ongoing illness, Christina could never venture beyond her small community, an austere house on a barren hill in Cushing, Maine.

For twenty years, the farm hosted painter Andrew Wyeth during the summers. Many of his paintings feature the family’s farm, but Christina herself would inspire his most iconic painting.

While Wyeth makes some appearances in the novel, this historical fiction focuses on Christina as it vividly imagines her life on the farm through the changing Maine seasons.

Book Summary

This novel introduces us to three generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside town on Maine’s rocky coastline.

Maren Larsen grew up in a small farming community in Minnesota, but in 1944, amid WWII, she was determined to do her part in the war effort. While working as a nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she’s swept off her feet by a doctor named Oliver, whose family summers yearly on the coast of Maine.

Twenty-six years later, in 1970, as the conflict with Vietnam rages, Maren and Oliver are at odds with their fiercely independent teenage daughter. Seventeen-year-old Annie has fallen for a man her parents disapprove of. By the end of the summer, the family has suffered a terrible tragedy, and Annie vows never to return to Haven Point, Maine.

In 2008, Maren’s grandaughter, Skye, arrives in Haven Point to help scatter her mother’s ashes. Skye has inherited her mother, Annie’s, view of Maine. Rather than seeing the coast’s beauty and enjoying the regattas, clambakes, and sing-alongs, Annie believes the people to be snobbish and petty. But Annie never told Skye the full story of what happened during the summer of ‘70.

Book Summary

During the 80 years leading up to the Great Depression, so-called Orphan Trains transported children from cities on the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest. The fates of the children on board – whether they would end up with loving families or end up with a childhood of hard labor – were determined by pure luck.

Vivian – now 91 – was one of those children, and the memories of her childhood are now tucked inside trunks in her attic. Eighteen-year-old Molly is aging out of the foster care system and is assigned community service helping the elderly Vivian clean out her home. She will soon learn that the two have much more in common than she ever expected.

Book Summary

The Penobscot Tribe of Maine long inhabited the area between present-day Old Town and Bangor, and still occupy tribal land on the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation. This series of twelve fictional short stories examines what it means to be Penobscot in the 21st century as they grapple with a painful past and an uncertain future.

Each story centers around David’s life, but they are told in a nonlinear order. We meet David’s family and see their struggles through the years. His mother is in an abusive relationship with an alcoholic medicine man. His sister deals with mental illness. David and others become dependent on methadone, and his grandmother suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Book Summary

In rural Maine, Dr. Wilbur Larch is a saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the more and desolate town of St. Cloud’s, a former logging camp. He also performs safe abortions, which is not a legal practice.

This is also the story of Dr. Larch’s favorite orphan, Homer, who lives in some interesting foster situations as he grows up. But, Homer is never adopted and instead follows in Dr. Larch’s footsteps with one distinction, he refuses to perform abortions.

Book Summary

While this book starts in 2019, it soon goes back to 1969 and chronologically tells the story of Annalisa’s life until the end of the 70s. She is a passionate and talented young artist trying to find her voice as the country is affected by the Vietnam War.

Annalisa leaves her grandma and small town and moves to the thriving art scene in Portland, Maine. While her primary pursuit is art, she meets Thomas, an Ivy-league student with a much different background than her own. He up-ends her quest to become a museum artist in ways she didn’t expect. But her unexpected love may be unraveled by an unforgivable lie.

Book Summary

Lucy is a 26-year-old teacher’s aide hoping to adopt her student, seven-year-old Christopher. He tragically lost his parents, but she needs to be in a better financial situation for both the actual adoption process to be approved and to take care of Christopher long-term.

She’s always found comfort in books, especially the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. The author stopped writing and became reclusive years ago, but she still regularly re-reads his work. Just when Lucy is about to give up on adopting Christopher, Jack Masterson re-emerges and announces a new book. However, it’s not a standard release. Four contestants will get to come to the real Clock Island and compete for a chance to win the single copy in existence, which is worth at least six figures.

Book Summary

Shirley lives in Maine and is frustrated by her limited ability to assist the war effort. When she learns about an opportunity for single women to join SPARs, the first female branch of the Coast Guard, she rushes to sign up despite objections by her father.

After rigorous training, she’s singled out for a special mission back home in Maine. The intelligence community has uncovered a plot against the first lady, and they need Shirley’s help to stop it.

Book Summary

Matt and Elle were meant to be. He was just two years old the first time he hugged her, seventeen when they first kissed under a starry sky, and thirty-three when she agreed to marry him. In their late 30s, they were longing for a baby when a tragic accident left Elle brain-dead.

Matt knows that Elle always feared a long, slow death, so he resolves to take her off of life support until he learns that she is pregnant. The doctors aren’t able to offer any guarantees, but they tell Matt that if Elle remains on life support, their baby has a chance at survival. Matt wants to take that chance, but his mother, Linney, feels strongly that it’s the wrong decision. She’s willing to fight her own son in court to fulfill Elle’s wishes as set forth in her living will.

The resulting controversial legal battle will stretch far beyond their family.

Book Summary

Retired teacher Olive deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large. This Pulitzer Prize winner is a collection of short stories that form a novel about Olive and those who intersect with her life.

The stories include a former student who has lost the will to live, Olive’s own adult child who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities, and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

Book Summary

English teacher Jake Epping is recruited by his friend Al, the local diner owner, to help with the most unlikely of requests. Al discovered a portal in the diner’s storeroom that transports him back in time to the era of Ike and Elvis. He becomes obsessed with using the portal to go back in time and stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But when he realizes he won’t be able to complete the mission, he enlists Jake for the job. Jake reluctantly agrees to go back to 1958 and live the early years of the 1960s in the small town of Jodie, Texas while devising a plan to stop JFK from dying on 11/22/63.

Book Summary

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel takes a deep look at the blue-collar heart of America. For the past 20 years, Miles Roby has been slinging burgers in Empire Falls, Maine – a town filled with abandoned mills and lifelong friends and neighbors.

Miles isn’t sure what kept him in his hometown all these years – he didn’t intend to end up here. He even left for a short time before being called back. Two decades later, he is divorcing his high school sweetheart and raising his teenage daughter. This novel is less about the plot and more about the character development as we get to know a wide cast of residents of Empire Falls.

Book Summary

This 30 book cozy mystery series is set in a small Maine town and features married mom Lucy Stone as an accidental amateur sleuth. In the first book, Mistletoe Murder, she’s working nights for extra Christmas money at the famous mail-order company Country Cousins. But when she discovers Sam Miller, its very wealthy founder, dead in his car from an apparent suicide, the sleuth in her knows something just doesn’t smell right.

The most recent book in the series is Patchwork Quilt Murder with a publication date of 4/23/2024.

Book Summary

This short (235-page) non-fiction is a memoir with a strong focus on the town of Mexico, Maine. In the early 1950s, the Oxford Paper factory was a primary employer of the resistents, who were mostly Catholic immigrants. The father of the Wood family provided a good life for his wife and four daughters through his job as a foreman at the paper mill, so when he suddenly passes away, the girls are set adrift.

A few months later, the nation also suffered the loss of its handsome Catholic leader, John F. Kennedy, echoing the personal loss felt in the Wood home.

Book Summary

In the 1950s, at age 67, great-grandmother Emma Gatewood set out for a walk with less than $200 in her pocket. But this wasn’t just any walk. She was determined to be the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone.

She achieved this big goal and then became the first person (man or woman) to walk the trail twice and then three times. When reporters learned of her quest, they began calling her Grandma Gatewood, and she even made it to the pages of Sports Illustrated.

This biography tells of her adventures, with stories pulled from her diaries, trail journals, letters, and even interviews with her family members.

Book Summary

This non-fiction biography sounds more like a fictional tale. In 1954, 63-year-old Annie Wilkins decided she had to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. The Maine farmer had no remaining relatives, had lost her family farm, and was given two years to live by the doctor.

Instead of resting as the doctor recommended, Annie bought a retired racehorse named Tarzan, put on a pair of men’s Dungarees, and set out from Maine in November. Her only other companion was her dog, Depeche Toi. Annie, Tarzan, and Depeche Toi traveled over 4000 miles with no maps through America’s big cities and small towns. Through the kindness of strangers and her incredible determination, Annie had the adventure of a lifetime.