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A Maine Summer Island
The Story of Bustins
by F. Benjamin Carr

$16.95
Softcover, Maine Nonfiction
ISBN: 978-1-934031-15-5


 


View a slide show of photos of beautiful Bustins Island.


ABOUT THE BOOK
Bustins lies in a quiet corner of inner Casco Bay just a mile or two offshore from the hustle and bustle of the tourist mecca of Freeport, yet most people know little, if anything, about it. Bustins features more than 100 homes, some more than a century old, and boasts its own ferry service. Still, it has no electricity, no businesses and almost no vehicles.

Ben, a longtime Bustins summer resident, takes readers from the island's beginnings as a farming community and a stop for fishermen through its days as a year-round community to its transformation into a summer colony with its struggles to remain a summer oasis while adapting to a changing world. And, he explains what the island means to him and why he considers it, above all, "home."

 REVIEWS
"It's an immersion in a special Maine just waiting to be enjoyed."
– Maine Sunday Telegram

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Carr grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester Academy and Cornell University and holds graduate degrees from Union Theological Seminary, Andover Newton Theological School, and the University of London. Ben and his wife, Marilyn, were summer residents of Bustins Island for many years before they moved to Maine full-time in the early 1970s. Ben served as a high school principal for twenty one years at Narraguagus, Noble, and Southern Aroostook. Marilyn taught art for the Machias School District in the late 1970s, and later taught art for many years at Massabesic Junior High School in Waterboro. Between them, Ben and Marilyn have five children and seventeen grandchildren.

EXCERPT
“ 'Where are you going?' asks a visitor at the South Freeport Town Landing. 'We're going home,' we answer.

That's explanation enough, as far as we are concerned. We know soon our ferry will ease us out through Harraseeket Harbor, slide between Wolfe's Neck and Pound of Tea Island and cross two miles of open Casco Bay water before nudging gently against the Public Dock on our little Bustins Island, barely three-quarters of a mile long by one-third mile wide. Soon after we will unpack bags and put food in the fridge in our cottage, one of more than one hundred such summer cottages that sit tooth-to-jowl, lining the island's edge like a multicolored necklace. ”