Welcome to Mattagash, the last town in the middle of the northern Maine wilderness. The road dead-ends here, but Mattagash's citizens are fiercely proud. Yet this simple town connected by a single one-way bridge is anything but tranquil. While neighbors bicker publicly over trivialities such as offensive mailbox designs and gossip about suspicious newcomers, they privately struggle to navigate deeper issues?scandals, loss, failed ambitions, the scars...

Fred and Lorraine Stone met at the famous Woodstock music festival in upstate New York. And as all couples must, they grew up– just not in the same direction. Now in their forties, Fred has become Frederick, a sell-out accountant whose last vestige of his free-wheeling years is a vegetarian diet. Meanwhile, Lorraine, who now goes by the name Chandra (Sanskrit for changeable), has morphed into a psychology teacher and animal rights activist. When...

Fortune hasn't been kind to 66-year-old Mattie Gifford. Her mother committed suicide, her husband slept with her best friend, and she can't stand her three selfish daughters. But she does love her son, Sonny, who nevertheless plunges her into deep despair when he takes two women and a poodle hostage in his ex-wife's trailer. Sonny claims to have seen John Lennon's face in an apparition and gets his own mug on the television news. Beaming Sonny Home...

Welcome to Mattagash, Maine, a town where everyone's personal lives are as entwined as their family trees. On the day of the first snowfall, the residents brace themselves for the long winter ahead. Mere survival will be hard; dealing with each other is another story. As winter settles in, various Mattagashians careen from conundrum to conundrum, trying to save dying small businesses, caring for crabby loved ones, and cruising through town, stirring...

Bixley, Maine. One year after Henry Munroe's fatal heart attack at age forty-one, his doting parents, prudish wife, rebellious son, and wayward brother are still reeling. So is Evie Cooper, a bartender, self-proclaimed "spiritual portraitist," and Henry's former mistress. While his widow, Jeanie, struggles with the betrayal, Henry's overbearing mother is making plans to hold a memorial service. As the date of the tribute draws closer and these worlds...

The typically tranquil backcountry town of Mattagash, Maine, is buzzing with news. Amy Joy Lawler, the last of Mattagash's founding clan, just announced her engagement to Jean Claude Cloutier-an outsider. Her scandalized mother takes to bed in protest while the rest of the town gleefully anticipates the social event of the year. As guests roll in, the no-good Giffords plot to steal wedding gifts and hubcaps, and motel owner Albert Pinkham devises...

"In 1911, a nearly unknown German-born theoretical physicist named Albert Einstein had developed his theory of relativity, but hadn't yet been able to prove it. The only way to do that was through the clear view and measurement of a solar eclipse. In May of 1919, one of the longest total solar eclipses of the 20th century was visible for almost seven minutes in the Southern Hemisphere"--