The Country of the Pointed Firs

This collection of stories is based on the personal experiences of Sarah Jewett as she grew up in rural Maine and traveled with her doctor father. The closely-knit sketches of a small fishing village in Maine seaport town in the 1890's are narrated by a summer resident. In the title story first published in 1886, a writer retreats to spend a quiet summer in a remote seaport, where she discovers a strong and cohesive community even as the town faces economic decline

Sarah Orne Jewett grew up in South Berwick, Maine, near the border of New Hampshire, in Jewett's day a declining New England seaport, where she set most of her fiction.