PORTLAND, Maine — Having lived part-time in Southwest Harbor for many years, Gigi Georges couldn’t help but be struck by what she calls the “strong dichotomy” between Mount Desert Island and coastal Washington County. MDI, with its extraordinary natural beauty, has long drawn people with great wealth, from the Rockefellers in the 1800s to Martha Stewart today. In contrast, Washington County--blessed with a slightly less dramatic but still arresting natural beauty--remains, as Georges writes, “one of the poorest and most isolated regions on the American Eastern Seaboard.”
In her new book, “Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America,” she sets out to find the soul of coastal Washington County through the lives of girls who are students at Narraguagus High School in Harrington. The five seemed to Georges to be generally representative of what’s going on in that region today, where, she notes, “girls are, by and large, surpassing the boys in academics, sports, arts, focus on community, and general ambition and leadership.”
The undertaking would have died a quick death had the girls not been willing to speak freely to Georges. But they did. “They opened their lives and their stories and their families to me,” she says. “And in turn, the community actually opened itself to me, and that was even a bigger gift.”
The young women deeply impressed Georges, who is herself the mother of a nine-year-old daughter. Despite the challenges that are part of life in Washington County, the five “were so self-possessed and so self-aware and so wonderful in the way they expressed their hopes, their dreams, the hurdles they were facing—and where they were going.”
Although Washington County faces problems unique to it, the story will likely resonate with people in rural communities far from Maine dealing with similar issues: poverty, drug use, an aging population, limited educational and economic opportunities. Georges, though, is an optimist, one buoyed by the strong family ties and abiding sense of community she observed. “I think there are lessons to be learned and lessons to be shared,” she says. “It’s my privilege and pleasure to be able to share them through the eyes of these extraordinary young women.”