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"The Country of the Pointed Firs" is a novel by Sarah Orne Jewett, published in 1896. The story is set in a small coastal town in Maine, where the narrator, a Bostonian, returns to finish writing her book. She stays with Almira Todd, a widow and the local apothecary and herbalist. The narrator rents an empty schoolhouse to concentrate on her writing, but she spends most of her time in meditation and receiving company. She befriends Mrs. Todd and her family, including William, Mrs. Todd's brother, and Mrs. Brackett, her elderly mother. The narrator attends the Bowden family reunion, a grand event in the lives of people in Dunnet and the surrounding countryside. She also befriends Elijah Tilley, an old fisherman lonely and widowed. The novel can be read as a study of the effects of isolation and hardship experienced by the inhabitants of the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast. The book was serialized in The Atlantic Monthly and published in book form in Boston and New York by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in November 1896. It is considered by some literary critics to be Jewett's finest work.
