Frankie's Place: A Love Story

Jim Sterba's Frankie's Place is an engaging autobiographical sketch with at least a little something for almost everyone: from an Horatio Alger story and the revival of a fractured family, to the history of seacoast Maine (Mount Desert), to favorite recipes, to a too brief recounting of his quite brilliant career as a NYTimes and WSJ reporter. What resonates most is his infectious delight when he at long last relinquishes the vagabond life for matrimony and a home of one's own -- albeit shared with various in-laws and sundry rodents. It's a love story for the final nesting of a man who came in from the cold. I couldn't help but wish that Frankie, the historian Francis FitzGerald, could have become more than an elusive presence, but I could understand his need to respect her privacy. (That is the way of the Wasps.)

Woven through Sterba's account of summers in Maine are bits of travelogue, Maine history, his experiences as a foreign journalist, recipes and his relationship with Frankie. The reader succumbs to that rapport with author and a well-loved place the same way as with Under the Tuscan Sun. The character of New Englanders and of those drawn to its scenic shores is faithfully rendered in this book. I envy him his time in that scenic area that he brings alive for us. My mouth waters as I read of the culinary treats and I begin to feel I know the paths through the woods and the friends and locals who inhabit his pages. Immerse yourself in this book if you are traveling to Maine anytime soon or use it as a substitute if you can't go.

Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Sterba has written a whimsical memoir that will tickle the fancy of those who have always dreamed about escaping the real world to the coast of Maine. "Frankie's Place" is a book about his wife's rustic cabin in Maine where he courted the author Frances FitzGerald and then, having won her hand, moved right in with her to live happily ever after.Sterba is a veteran reporter, but he is also an astute observer, and he manages to weave some very lucid observations on a variety of issues into his tale of life in a cabin on the Maine coast. Sterba is also very funny. He touches on any number of subjects with a wry wit that leaves the reader smiling to himself time and again, as Sterba explains the intricacies of being a foreign correspondent who roams the world for nine months of the year and then has the good fortune to spend his summers in Maine.That good fortune came when he met Frances ("Frankie") FitzGerald, the noted Pulitzer Prizing winning historian. Sterba courts her even from his overseas assignments, and he gets his first taste of Maine when Frankie invites him to spend a weekend in her family's bucolic cabin in Northeast Harbor, located on Mount Desert Island. Frankie comes from the Peabody family from Boston ( & Maine) on her mother's side. Her father was Desmond Fitzgerald, a senior CIA Cold WarriorSo Frankie is no pushover, and she puts Sterba through his paces as she introduces him to life on a Maine island. There are freezing plunges into the ocean, morning jogs and long walks. Sterba affectionally refers to this regimen as the FitzGerald Survival School. He eventually survives Frankie's school, and the two get married. Sterba, a fatherless mid-western farm boy, moves Down East. The first thing Sterba has to cope with is the social strata in Maine. There are the locals ("Mainers"), the middle class summer residents ("rusticators"), and then the high priests of Mount Desert Island -- the multi-generational summer residents who are principally WASP's from Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Sterba spends much of the book searching for the quintessential WASP (or "Philadelphia snob") and is, seemingly, shocked -- shocked! -- to be told that his wife is that very person (she isn't).But this book is not just about Maine. We learn how Sterba moves from the New York Times (Editor Abe Rosenthal was his bete noir) to the Wall Street Journal where he becomes an A-Head writer, penning the features on the Journal's front page. He sees a lot of similarities between island life in Maine and other parts of the globe where he roamed for the Times and the Journal. He compares the economic development of a tiny rural town in Indonesia to the "improvements" of the trails on Mount Desert Island (not good in either case); he has some cogent observations on the news industry, as well -- noting that the Wall Street Journal offered him the chance to do the kind of reporting and writing that he never could do at the New York Ti

Jim Sterba's exquisitely-written memoir of his search for a sense of family and place is an enchanting love story. I couldn't put it down -- the perfect book to bring along on summer holidays.

This book is about a good soul who shares his recipes for a good life as well as a good meal. He shows us how to take the raw ingredients life presents us with and in addition to lots of garlic, onion and fresh herbs, how to enrich the stew with love, forgiveness and gratitude.Like the good reporter he is, he tells it in a story so engaging you will not want it to end and when it does you?ll kiss the person next to you and run to the fridge to see what is there to be transformed.It is a symphony of the senses; sight, taste, touch and sound, animated by a generous spirit. In my usual smart alec fashion I would make comparisons to this or that book, place it in this or that category. Finally comparisons exhausted, I realized it?s in a class by itself. Read it for the good of YOUR soul.