Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick, Maine on September 3, 1849. Unable to attend school because of arthritis, she learned about coastal life in New England as she accompanied her father, a doctor, on his rounds. He encouraged both her reading and her writing. When she began submitting fiction in 1867, using the pseudonyms A. D. Eliot, Alice Eliot, and Sarah C. Sweet, her chosen topic was often the life and people of her native, rural Maine. Her first published story appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869 and her first short story collection, Deephaven, was published in 1877. Her first novel, A Country Doctor was published in 1884. Her other works include A Marsh Island… (1885), A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), A Native of Winby (1893), Tales of New England (1894) and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). She stopped writing in 1902, after a fall left her with severe head injuries. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on June 24, 1909.
Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston. She is the author of the international bestseller The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oprah's Book Club. Her other works include Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water (a finalist for the prestigious Orange Prize), Fortune's Rocks, and Rescue. In 1998, she received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. Her title Stella Bain made the New York Times Best Seller List in 2013.