Frankie's Place
A Love Story by Jim Sterba
Photo by Joan Bingham

Homepage of Author Jim Sterba


A Cozy Writer's Nest


   Imagine a little house in the woods by the sea on the Maine coast. Down a bumpy lane, out of harm’s way and the clamor of the modern world, Frankie’s Place is a sublime summer retreat, with mussel beds out front, blackberry bushes out back, evergreens all around, and lovely views of forested mountains and a glacier-carved fjord full of lobster buoys, seabirds and sailboats.
   One summer, veteran foreign correspondent Jim Sterba is invited for a visit by a woman he barely knows, author Frances FitzGerald. He arrives and discovers a perfect writer’s nest. He visits again in the fall, comes for a week the next summer, and gradually falls in love with his host as much as with her place. Icy plunges into Somes Sound christen their island mornings. Long periods of dutiful writing are followed with rigorous mountain walks, forays for wild mushrooms, boating to small islands and sailing. In the evenings, Jim and Frankie prepare simple meals with local ingredients. Each summer they return to familiar comforts. But the unexpected often lurks. One summer Jim discovers a father he never knew.
   Jim and Frankie couldn’t have had more disparate childhoods. Jim grew up on a struggling Michigan farm while Frankie lived in a Manhattan townhouse and an English country estate. But their intelligence, ambition, and independence propelled them both into writing careers and kept them single until they met each other later in life. In this Tracy-Hepburn romance, the down-to-earth newspaperman charms the sophisticated New Yorker – their long path to real love makes us cheer Jim on as he walks up a mountain to propose to Frankie, and has us itching for a visit to Mount Desert Island.

Contacts:
Grove Atlantic Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Phone: 212-614-7850

Agent:
Robert Lescher
Lescher & Lescher, Ltd.
346 East 84th St., New York, NY 10028.
Phone: 212-396-1991
Fax: 212-529-2716

Yankee Magazine
The Los Angeles Times
The New York Times
The Washington Post
San Francisco Chronicle
The Wall Street Journal
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"I loved it." - Tom Brokaw


WHAT THEY SAID:

A New York Times notable book.

Chicago Tribune best list for 2003.

An American Bookseller's Association Top Ten for Valentine's Day 2004.

"This little book is the 'find' of a year fraught with death and taxes and 21st century uncertainty." - Columnist Liz Smith

"If this were a movie, it would feature Bogart as Sterba, a no-frills journalist courting Hepburn, as FitzGerald, the high WASP dame who types on an old Remington and starts each day with a dip in the icy brink." - Portland Phoenix

"Frankie's Place could be a complex rebuttal to the theological concept of this Earth as a vale of tears." - Washington Post


"A fetching account." - The New York Times

"This is a beautiful memoir..." - Publishers Weekly, May 12, 2003*

"The perfect summer read..."
          - Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2003*

"A highly entertaining tale of love, family and place written with grace and lyrical humor. It took me places I hadn't expected to go, well beyond the screen doors, front porches and bracing waters of coastal Maine. I loved it.” - Tom Brokaw



PRAISE

"And so what category does this delightful book fall into—travel book, cookbook, journalistic memoir? In the end it doesn't matter: Frankie's Place is charming, funny, full of insights into the way we live today, and it's the story of one man's lifelong search for a home.”
          —David Halberstam


"Jim Sterba has found his own American Arcadia, his own Walden pond, and in the process, himself. He records his quest with a loving honesty, never sentimental, never cloying . . .a man taking stock of his life at a certain time of life. What's more, it includes recipes for some delicious grub.”
          —Morley Safer

“A memoir almost audacious in its normalcy: it’s the story of a middle-aged white guy with no obvious dysfunctions or ghosts in his closet. What James Sterba does have—and has in abundance—is charm, humor, and a wonderful gift for capturing the rhythms and pleasures of July days whiled away on the Maine coast. Sterba is great company on the page, and Frankie’s Place succeeds, like no other book I know, in getting the quotidian glories of a New England summer between two covers.”
          —Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire and Second Nature“


“Frankie’s Place is quite simply a joy to read—a portrait of a place, a way of life, and a marriage, by a reporter who turns out to be the world's last extant romantic. Not to mention a great natural cook—who gives us, in addition to everything else, his recipes.”
          —Joan Didion

“Every word of this wonderful love story speaks of solid, old-fashioned ideals. It is an honest, often hilariously funny book that tells a love story you'll not soon forget. A selection of curious, downeast recipes is an added lagniappe.”
          —Peter Duchin, author of Ghost of A Chance: A Memoir

“Frankie’s Place has tremendous natural charm; it's the witty and wonderfully observed narrative of a summer’s action Down East. It should fit very nicely into anyone’s beach bag, though it helps if you’re attracted to islands, Maine lore, lost fathers, the absurdities of the reporter’s trade, and love stories.”
          —Ward Just

"Jim Sterba made his name as a courageous foreign correspondent -- a restless, gifted journalistic explorer. But in the middle of his odyessey the wind changed, and, most extraordinarily, he found his way home. We can't all be so fortunate, but we can do ourselves the favor of reading Frankie's Place."
          -Michael Janeway


James P. Sterba has been a foreign correspondent, war correspondent and national news reporter for more than three decades. He joined The Wall Street Journal in 1982 after 16 years with The New York Times. He lives in New York most of the year and at Frankie's Place in the summer.