Roy Barrette got his first glimpse of Maine in 1919 while working as a deckhand on a coal barge. In 1958, after ten years at sea and a career as an insurance salesman in Philadelphia, Barrette and his wife, Helen, moved to a coastal farm in Maine where he tended his garden, kept a few barnyard animals, and wrote an award-winning weekly column for The Ellsworth American and The Berkshire Eagle. His essays also appeared in Down East and Yankee magazines. Barrette penned two more books, A Countryman’s Bed Book and A Countryman’s Farewell, before his death in 1995 at 98.