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Frankie's Place: A Love Story

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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 Warrior

So 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 Times.

Sterba fancies himself as a good cook, and he reprints his favorite recipes throughout the book. The one thing he doesn't cook is lobsters, for that is Frankie's job. She's no pushover in that department, either, Sterba notes. He describes how she disappears into the kitchen to boil the lobsters alive and then uses a hammer or whatever heavy utensil is handy to crack them open for the dinner table. By the time the lobsters are served, Sterba says, the kitchen looks like a war zone.

Sterba, meanwhile has his own war. He discovers mice in Frankie's Place. So, naturally as an old Asian hand, he consults The Art of War, written by the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, on how best to wage war against the mice. Throughout the book, Sterba gives us updates on his war against the mice -- with body counts just like he reported on in Vietnam. It's sort of a Downeast version of the Saigon follies. But finally (like the Ford Administration in 1975 in Vietnam) Sterba throws in the towel, comparing his mice war to the battles for Hamburger Hill in Vietnam where the Americans took the Hill time and again in a seemingly mindless, winless struggle for military dominance. In the end, Sterba accommodates himself to the mice (they continue to ignore him).

Perhaps the most touching episode in the book comes near the end when Sterba discovers he isn't fatherless after all. His natural father gets in touch with him through an uncle. The uncle calls to tell Sterba that his real father, Walter Watts, has written a letter and wants to meet his son, whom he hasn't seen in some 50 years. The story of how they got together is a gripping account.

Sterba and his father eventually have a reunion in Florida where his father has retired. The two reconcile after all those years, and still enjoy playing golf with each other (His father is gracious enough to let Sterba win).

This is marvelous book, best left for a rainy day, when one has the time to settle in and enjoy the wonders of Maine. Sterba writes well, his humor is intact, and he relates a hell of a good story about a couple of writers who have seen a lot of the world -- but are thankful they can retreat to their own cozy Maine camp overlooking Somes Sound.

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 youll 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 its in a class by itself. Read it for the good of YOUR soul.

This is the best kind of travel memoir -- it has recipes, witty anecdotes and characters, natural and social histories, and enchanting descriptions of the land, sea, and sky. Oh yes, and lessons in battling house mice, an overabundance of tomatoes, and the encroachment of crass non-natives. But mostly, it has a narrator whose personal contributions to all of the above make it an even richer experience. Sterba has a journalist's innate curiosity about everything, a journalist's objective stance, and a journalist's heart -- he knows, in other words, wehere the stories lie and he knows how to spin them. He makes you want to know the people as well as the place. Frankie's Place reminds me of Peter Mayle's Provence stories, only less contrived.

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.)

Over the years, lots of books have been written by city folks who summer in or retire to cabins in rural or remote or beach or otherwise-touristy areas and who feel the need to share their experiences with the rest of us. "Frankie's Place"now ranks at the top of that genre.

This book is not just about two NYC writers who spend extended summers in a cottage on the coast of Maine. It's about Sterba's own personal lifetime journey, from his Michigan childhood to a career as a newspaperman covering stories in Asian countries. He's a well-traveled, well-seasoned reporter, and his prose reads like a conversation and his description paints pictures. Even if your only exposure to the Maine lifestyle has been through stereotyped glimpses of it during "Murder, She Wrote" reruns, you'll find yourself experiencing it firsthand here. You'll see and feel the rocky shoreline, the brutally brisk-cold seawater, the drenching damp of a day-long fog, the delight in allowing yourself to be treated to a lobster dinner. You'll know what it's like to live in a resort area, both before and after the busy season. And as you read along, the text becomes a subtle but most meaningful lecture on Sense of Place. You quietly walk toward that goal with Jim and Frankie, and each one of you knows what the final outcome will be.

Treat yourself to Sterba's book especially if you're feeling lost in 21st-century civilization. It will bring you peace, laughter, good food, and light contemplation.

I live on Mt. Desert Island so I guess I'm not captivated by Mr. Sterba's anthropological examination of his brief stays each year on MDI. I read the book while traveling to capture that 'sense of place' I was missing while away from MDI. That's about the only thing I find captivating about the book.

There is no apparent organization to the rambling narrative which touches on wealthy but non-ostentatious 'summer people' and the 'quaint ways' of the locals. Random observations, lots of words in 'quotes'...kind of irritating. A few factual errors about directions and where things are located (surprising for a reporter) won't bother the average reader.

I found the book disorganized and saccharin, but I'm happy that Mr. Sterba is happy.

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.

There are not enough words to say how much I enjoyed this book. For anyone that loves Maine, seafood, politics, humor and history, this is a book you will devour. Having spent time vacationing in Maine while growing up, Jim Sterba's descriptions brought some of my favorite childhood memories back to me. As an avid reader of the New Yorker, I will now always, with a smile, think of the New Yorker as Toi Lit.

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.

I just happened to pick this book off the library shelf and really enjoyed the whole thing. Most of the story is set in Maine and now I would like to visit that area. The author's mother lives just afew miles from me so I could relate well to that part of the story. Other parts of the book talked about New York and food, what's not to like!

Good story, well told.