Winslow Homer is an important name in American art, his canvases hang in museums around the world. He painted watercolors and oils of the Caribbean, the South, the seacoast of England, and the Adirondacks, but it is as a painter of the Maine coast that he is best known.

In his biography we follow this New Englander from his childhood in Cambridge through his days during the Civil War as an artist for Harper's Weekly, his early years in New York, his visits to France and England, and to his happy years in Prouts Neck, Maine.

Elizabeth Ripley was fortunate to speak with a friend of the Homer family, who remembered many anecdotes of the artist. As they strolled along the rocky coastline of Prouts Neck, the author recognized many familiar scenes from Homer's paintings and she understood his need of solitude in order to devote his life to painting.