Roy Barrette was born in America, but raised in England. He got his first glimpse of Maine in 1919, while working as a deckhand on an 800-ton coal barge. After ten years at sea, Barrette began a successful business career in Philadelphia. After retiring in 1958, Barrette and his wife Helen purchased a saltwater farm on Naskeag Point in Brooklin, Maine where he tended his garden, kept a few barnyard animals, and wrote an award-winning weekly column for The Ellsworth American and The Berkshire Eagle. His essays also appeared in Down East and Yankee magazines. Barrette penned two more books, A Countryman's Bed Book and A Countryman's Farewell, before his death in 1995 at 98.