Dear Readers,

There are a lot of writers in our region, but in recent years, with the notable exception of the great Richard Ford, few have gained much national attention — until now.

Fred Kaplan, a soft spoken retired history professor and biographer, spent six years researching and writing a biography of John Quincy Adams, our sixth president. It didn't take much time for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker to spend lots of their valuable space dissecting and praising his latest effort. The work is “John Quincy Adams: American Visionary,” (Harper, 652 pages, $29.99).

As the son of our second president, John Quincy Adams spent much of his life in the shadow of his father (sound familiar?). He was a firm and outspoken opponent of slavery, a skilled diplomat and legislator, who was, as Kaplan said in an interview with the Boothbay Register, “brutally honest.”

Fortunately for him, Quincy Adams kept a diary that provided a detailed insight into his life. Still, said the Post, “for historians even one as distinguished and talented as Fred Kaplan, the task of writing a biography of John Quincy Adams is a daunting one.” The Times piled on with praise too. “Kaplan has produced a full-length narrative of this remarkable life, rendered in lucid and loving prose. Adams emerges from these pages as a man driven to prove his worth.”

The New Yorker spent four full pages on the Kaplan work, seeming to criticize him for being too balanced, then spending the bulk of the review explaining how few of Adams' contemporaries liked him, while suggesting the author liked his subject a bit too much.

Admitting he much preferred the Post and the Times view to that of The New Yorker, Kaplan is a bit philosophical about the critical review process.

“I spent six years on the book. For the most part, I was alone. It was privately and completely mine — until I finished it. Then it was shown to the world.”

To any writer, a critical review that is less than flattering is not pleasant. Those that are especially nasty can hurt. “They make me terribly hurt and very angry,” Kaplan said.

On the other side, he said, “There is a special feeling when someone in our community comes up and bonds with a writer, telling him they read the book, bought it, or asked a question about it.”

A summer resident since 1960 and a full-time resident for the last dozen or so years, Kaplan, who has written more than eight biographies, including those of Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens and Gore Vidal, has acquired a lot of Boothbay friends and fans. All will be glad to learn he is already mulling over his next project: linking the careers of Lincoln and Quincy Adams.

For our community, it is great to see the nation's literary mavens take notice of one of our neighbor’s fine and careful work.

As for his critics and their sharp pens, Kaplan is a bit philosophical. Once a book goes on the market, it sort of becomes a fire hydrant. “Any dog (or critic) can walk over and ...”