What's Up with Maine

Suddenly it seems every contemporary I read these days is set in Maine.  The latest, Janet Chapman's Spellbound Falls, reviewed on AAR today, which I've put in my Desert Island Keeper pile, makes Maine seem a mystical place with delightful, down-home people.  While I only know one Maine couple, Jackie and John Tiere, Chapman would recognize them as typical Mainers (Maineites?).

I think of people in Maine akin to people from Nebraska where I grew up.  Nebraskans of my era are practical, hard-working folk.  But there is a streak of the other world in them, a streak of fantasy that helps pass the dull, cold winters--especially that stretch from the end of the football season (Go Huskers!) to the onset of spring in mid- to late May.

Since Spellbound takes place during that pseudo-springtime when the frozen lakes are starting to melt but no crocuses have hatched, the world is ripe for romance and surprises.

And isn't the cover of the book lovely?  I'd like to visit for that picture alone!