The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

The Country of the Pointed Firs is Sarah Orne Jewett's 1896 sequence of linked sketches about the fictional coastal village of Dunnet Landing, Maine.

An unnamed writer returns for the summer and lodges with Almira Todd, a widow and herbalist whose visitors make privacy difficult but open the life of the town to her guest. A rented schoolhouse becomes the narrator's workplace and a point from which to observe the harbor and its people.

Through Mrs. Todd, Captain Littlepage, the journey to Green Island, and the Bowden family reunion, the narrator hears stories of voyages, losses, solitude, and attachment to place. There is little conventional plot; acquaintance itself is the book's organizing movement.

Jewett's precise local detail preserves a maritime community already marked by economic decline and an aging population. The linked voices create a portrait of memory, female friendship, endurance, and the slow passage from visitor to participant.

"There was something about the coast town of Dunnet which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine. Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the Landing."