RJ Heller

1 week ago | bangordailynews.com | RJ Heller

There is an almost perfect concave-cupped cove in Machiasport that will listen to your thoughts. It has been here for eons. Its shore is covered in stones of all size, shape and color. There is no sand, only loose brightly polished and rounded rocks of granite, red rhyolite, quartzite and other rock reduced in size as primordial seconds roll into millennia. The waters of Machias Bay bless the beach with answers to questions, many not yet asked. Jasper Beach is special.

2 months ago | bangordailynews.com | RJ Heller

“When she thought of jumping the gun, she thought of the gun that killed their son. He removed his arm that had stayed around her until then. She was a little breathless as well. He chose not to look at her, but rather to look down at his hands, when he said, ‘The Land of Cockaigne.’”*******In his latest novel, Land of Cockaigne, Jeffrey Lewis approaches the dynamics of locals and those from out of state in the imagined Maine community of Sneed’s Harbor.

2 months ago | bangordailynews.com | RJ Heller

It is a memorable line from an iconic movie. A young Iowa corn farmer hears a ghostly voice whisper: “If you build it, he will come.”In the end, as another character talks about what people yearn for — memories of their past, their childhood; memories of place and of baseball. He then turns with a smile and says to the young farmer: “People most definitely will come, Ray.”With that, Down East Maine is on my mind. It is a place that offers much.

Sep 20, 2024 | bangordailynews.com | RJ Heller

This story was originally published in September 2021. The end of summer always brings some self-reflection. My thoughts turn to those special places both as a child growing up in Pennsylvania, and today, living life Down East. On a recent trip back to Allentown, Pennsylvania, the place I was born and raised, I had the opportunity to visit one such place — a place I have not been back to in a very long time.

Jul 8, 2024 | bangordailynews.com | RJ Heller

In her new book, “A Gardener at the End of the World,” Margot Anne Kelley brings the reader into her world for a full year at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. She begins by telling us: “We linger in the long now, the moment stretching tauter, thinner, as promises it will end extend, again and again, beyond grim horizon. Only the seasons adhere to the old order; I measure time by the tamarack.”Kelley lives in Port Clyde.