Monica Kissane’s goal was simple: She wanted to work from home. Her husband, Rock Nadeau, wanted a career that would place him in the center of a community. They wanted to work together.

Nadeau suggested they buy a diner, to which his wife replied, “I don’t look like Flo.”

At a time when many have watched their investments crumble, Linda Godfrey, a retreat producer from Eastport, can reasonably say that hers is sturdier than most. It stands just thirty feet from the silvery, fish-laden shore of Passamaquoddy Bay—all 4,500-feet of it.

That’s because five years ago, Godfrey invited eight female friends to join her in buying and renovating one of Moose Island’s century-old, brick factories and refurbishing it as a gallery and seminar space.

When you live in a town that is both as picturesque and as historic as Hallowell, it’s not unusual to harbor strong opinions. But for one resident, Anthony Ronzio, those opinions are bound to be a bit more potent. The reason? He gets paid for them — Monday through Sunday — as the editorial page editor for the Lewiston Sun Journal.

Ronzio, his girlfriend, and her three daughters live a couple miles from the middle of town in a 1907-era farmhouse — downright modern

Maine muralist Gordon Carlisle admits he was looking for a deal when he and his wife, Susan Poulin, were driven from their Portsmouth apartment nearly a decade ago by rising rents. But what they discovered in the nearby fields and farmlands of South Berwick was more than simply affordable. They found, as have many others, a rural haven in the midst of southern Maine’s disappearing countryside.

“We were apprehensive at first,” Carlisle confessed from his Civil War-era house

Jeff Clapp’s family has been vacationing in Brunswick since 1929 when his great-grandfather built a family camp here on Princess Point. The ecological artist—who transforms trashed oxygen canisters from Mount Everest into inspirational bells—now lives nearby with his wife, Wendy Rawson.