Hidden Places

Maine Writers on Coastal Villages, Mill Towns, and the North Country

Joseph Conforti

Across decades, Maine has produced nationally-recognized novelists of place-based fiction. From the late nineteenth century to the present, writers have explored the experiences of living in far-flung settings: island and coastal villages; northwoods lumbering communities; unincorporated townships; backcountry hamlets; and mill cities and towns. Taken together their body of work composes a remarkable literary map of a diverse and changing Maine. Hidden Places explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they captured at moments in time.

Hidden Places traces the work of these writers to provoke readers into seeing and understanding Maine places with new awareness. These Maine writers construe place as both a territory on the ground and a country of the imagination. They help insiders see more clearly what is distinctive about their communities and encourage outsiders to better understand what might seem quaint or odd about the state. Like a well-drawn atlas, Hidden Places seeks to capture a diverse state at the granular level one representation at a time. It explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they wrote of.

Down East Books

Pages: 264 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-60893-729-5 • eBook • March 2020 • $38.00 • (£29.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / Regional, Fiction / Anthologies (multiple authors), Fiction / Small Town & Rural

Hidden Places

Maine Writers on Coastal Villages, Mill Towns, and the North Country

eBook

Summary

Across decades, Maine has produced nationally-recognized novelists of place-based fiction. From the late nineteenth century to the present, writers have explored the experiences of living in far-flung settings: island and coastal villages; northwoods lumbering communities; unincorporated townships; backcountry hamlets; and mill cities and towns. Taken together their body of work composes a remarkable literary map of a diverse and changing Maine. Hidden Places explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they captured at moments in time.

Hidden Places traces the work of these writers to provoke readers into seeing and understanding Maine places with new awareness. These Maine writers construe place as both a territory on the ground and a country of the imagination. They help insiders see more clearly what is distinctive about their communities and encourage outsiders to better understand what might seem quaint or odd about the state. Like a well-drawn atlas, Hidden Places seeks to capture a diverse state at the granular level one representation at a time. It explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they wrote of.

Details

Down East Books

Pages: 264 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-60893-729-5 • eBook • March 2020 • $38.00 • (£29.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / Regional, Fiction / Anthologies (multiple authors), Fiction / Small Town & Rural

Author

Joseph Conforti is the author of seven previous books, including the award-winning Imagining New England. He also edited and contributed to Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New England, which received an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History. Conforti served for ten years as the founding director of the American and New England Studies Program at the University of Southern Maine.

Reviews

Joseph Conforti’s Hidden Places belongs on any bookshelf devoted to Maine or New England studies. A detailed guide to a thought-provoking selection of Maine’s place-based fiction, it is not only a valuable resource for general readers seeking to learn more but an excellent reference volume for librarians working on collection development or advice for readers, teachers creating syllabi, and critics searching for information and inspiration.

— New England Quarterly

Hidden Places

Maine Writers on Coastal Villages, Mill Towns, and the North Country

Joseph Conforti

Hidden Places

Maine Writers on Coastal Villages, Mill Towns, and the North Country

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