The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett, was our book club book. Our criterion is “under 200 pages” and good. This short novel of vignettes written in the late 1800s is filled with memorable characters and beautiful imagery. Jewett has no trouble crafting beautiful sentences that pithily evoke all manner of emotions, from nostalgia to love of nature to empathy for our fellow humans. Along the way you get a good dose of insight into ordinary life in the pre-electric era in rural, coastal, sea-oriented America. Jewett would have loved Rachel Carson!