Hauling by Hand
The Life and Times of a Maine Island
Dean Lunt
9781944762230
480 pages
Islandport Press
Overview
Hauling by Hand tells the remarkable story of Frenchboro, Long Island, which sits eight miles off the coast, making it one of the state's most remote outposts. It is one of only 14 Maine islands still supporting a year-round community, while only a century ago, there were some 300 such communities. The island's roots were set in the 1820s by the Lunt family and a small band of pioneers who together carved an island community from the spruce and granite shores. Fueled by the shipping and fishing industries, Long Island evolved from outpost to important offshore port before economic changes transformed the island into a hardscrabble turn-of-the-century fishing village where nearly 200 residents scratched a living from depleted fishing stocks and rocky soil. Today, the town of Frenchboro has a population of nearly 50 people, but it has neither a general store, nor tourist hotel, nor daily ferry service. Instead there is a village, a soul, and a way of life.
Author Bio
An eighth-generation island native, Dean Lunt was born and raised in the island fishing village of Frenchboro. His ancestors arrived on Mount Desert Island in the late 1700s and many of them moved out across the bay to settle Long Island in the early 1800s where they have fished the waters of Blue Hill Bay ever since. In 1999, Lunt founded Islandport Press, an award-winning independent book publishing company that produces books with New England themes. Lunt, a graduate of Syracuse University and former newspaper reporter is the publisher of Islandport and Islandport Magazine and has written two nonfiction books, Hauling by Hand and Here for Generations. He lives in Yarmouth with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters.
