The Island Village

53

Write about a village, real rural countryside. Do you idealize it as many writers and poets have done? Or, as Agatha Christie, see its dark side? Rise and Write is back and I am having fun again.  

The Island Village

I fell in love with the Bennett's Island series of books written by the late Elizabeth Ogilvie.  The first book I ever read, The Season's Hereafter, when I was sixteen started my love for Maine and Island communities. Besides being a proper Anglophile, I am a Maineophlie as well, and spent my high school years dreaming of going away to college in Maine, and getting a job for the summer in a quaint fishing village just off the Maine coast. I learned years later that Seasons was actually part of a series of books, that originated some twenty years earlier, with a story line told in book one through a flashback to pre-depression, 1920's glory, moving into the depression.  

In both books, I learned about the island village, which consisted of the various family houses, the little store, fish buyer, and post office all in one, and the little school. In book one, read more than a decade later, I learned the back ground story on most of the main characters.  I grew up with them-came of age with them.  I suddenly understood the references in the newer book.  There actually were nine adult books in all.  Three focusing on the main family, really the eldest daughter, then three more focused on newcomers to the village, and three more, that incorporated the next generation in more detail.  The last was written towards the end of Ms Ogilvie's life.  She wrote some children and young adult novels set on the island as well.  Of course, I read them too, and enjoyed them with my daughters. 

Bennett's Island is the fictional version of the real island known as Criehaven, where the author spent many summers.  The island village was in her blood, and she chose to immortalize in her beloved books.  You can see picture on the Internet of how the village looks today, though I believe there are no year round residents any more, no school, and no store at all.  However, nearby  Brigport as it is called in the books, but is really Matinicus, still has a thriving, if not tiny year round community.  Spending a week on either Island is on my bucket list, though Matincus is probably more likely as it actually has accommodations. That is the wonder of a good story teller.  They create such a vivid picture of something, you want to be there.  I want to be whisked away to another time, another place, and be absorbed in the island village life each time I pick up one of her books. 

16 minutes