By Harold van Doren

More than 80 stories of growing up and living on Isle au Haut, a blend of history, biography and storytelling that weaves through the author’s personal saga. Illustrated with the author’s line drawings, his wife’s linocuts and over 60 historical photos. “A must read for anyone interested in solving the riddle of what makes the Maine islands so magical.” —Jeff Burke

Islands are unique places with unique characters. Describing the soul of an island takes an island soul. Harold Van Doren captures the soul of Isle au Haut where barely forty people make up one of the smallest year-round populations on the coast of Maine. Harold relates a series of stories about this singular combination of geography and independent people who choose island life over the much more highly regulated life of the mainland. He examines the idiosyncrasies of the people and place through his thoughtful recitation of poignant memories of life on the island with its inimitable mix of beauty, humor, sadness, and sense of its own history.

—Bob Gerber

Nobody knows the story of Isle au Haut better than Harold van Doren. Nobody. And nobody has ever told the island's story better, in a more genuine offshore Downeast voice.

Over the past 50 years I've heard the voices of some of the original story tellers herein and can say without reservation that Harold tells their tales the way they were told, keeping alive for us the idioms ("getting on his barvel") and the words ("titrivate") from the old days.

A lively biography of the island, told in stories by a master, ranking up there with the best of narrative histories one can find. And oh!, the old photos, the ghostly faces from the past, the maps, and best of all the delightful prose tribute to those early island days.

About An Island Sense of Home, it is best said with four words that everyone who writes about Maine longs to hear: "You got it right."

—Peter Scott

Peter Scott is the author of four Maine island novels: Something in the Water, Barter Island, The Boy Who Came Walking Home, and In Deer Isle, Maine.