Up River: The Story of a Maine Fishing Community (Library of New England)

Rating:
Summary: UP RIVER opens one's eyes to examine the working poor.
Review: Olive Pierce and Carolyn Chute have teamed up to tell it like it is on the coast of Maine, in this home-spun fishing family community.

Olive with her keen eye for catching glimpses of light in phenomenal settings with her camera, and her obviously very relentless effort to live with these folks and document their spirits, has got to stand out as an American best-work The black and white photography is moving to the heart. She qualifies her perspective in the forward to the book, sharing a moment to lead the reader to look and listen to only one's unbiased emotions.

Carolyn Chute is, as always, bold and cutting to the point. She is poetically harmonizing with words and the photography, bringing an explanation to a perspective from deep within the soul--that place sometimes ignored by the demands of our fast-paced material world.

And the people in the book, there just some of the best folks you'd ever want to know. Why? I've not only read the book, I know them. They're real; and UP RIVER proves that low-income people are to be respected for their place in the spectrum of human experience.