Lucia Bartlett

The King of Maine Lucia Bartlett

Maine, like much of the United States, is in the midst of an opioid crisis. It arrives in northern Maine around the same time as the MacPhees, and is verging on disaster by their second year of residence.

After a brush with oxycodone, forty-two-year-old Nigel MacPhee, a married father of four, sets off on a path to remake himself, opening gallery and antique store in Foster Lake and using his God-given talents for mental healing on others, including his mother, Meg. Like her dad, thirteen-year-old Ada only wants to help. She's involved with the therapeutic riding program created by their neighbors, Dan and Anne Stevens, while her siblings-Bette, Jeff, and Henry-are having their own adventures in the otherwise dull northern Maine countryside. Then there are unforeseen consequences when Nigel's gallery business picks up and he sells a puzzle box to his old friend Henry Hobbs, who fled heavily taxed Maine for tax-free New Hampshire. It seems there are men spying on the MacPhees-and Nigel may have gotten involved in something way out of his depth.

In this novel, a family transplanted to northern Maine in the midst of the opioid crisis begins to settle in, only to find themselves encountering unexpected danger.