OUR WAY DOWN EAST

Eight years of life at Flying Point, Maine, told by the distaff side of a young couple. She was a one-time actress, an agitator for all causes. These are tales of excursions into neighborliness, misunderstandings of Maine speech, button collecting and where it led her, the acquisition of antiques, dreams of remodelling their house, their dog, their cars, the Maine mud and Maine winter, flower decoration, what happened when she helped at funerals and weddings, her husband's remonstrances and mad humors, his running for office and being defeated, the excitements of the woods and the weather, gardening, the coming of her baby and how it changed things. Then the war -- her husband joins the Navy -- and life is different. Though not without some fun and humor for the reader, this is somewhat too artlessly, too spryly told, for my taste. There's a good sense of the people and the country, and a wry awareness of how foolish the Grahams must have appeared to the ""Maniacs"".