I'd like to recommend a book I just read. "The Country of the Pointed Firs" is by Sarah Orne Jewett. The book was written in 1886 or thereabouts and is about people living in Maine. It's a series of different stories. It really is interesting to learn how people lived then. But mostly I would say that the writing is poetic, beautifully descriptive and moving. I happened upon the book in a paperback form.