"[The] stories range from heart-breaking to hilarious."

- Maine Magazine

What would happen if we let our kids have the kind of childhood we enjoyed?

Sarah Smiley’s first eight years of motherhood can be summed up like this: She drove little people through stop-and-go traffic, from one end of a busy city to another, for planned activities and sports.

She and her family were living in Florida, where Smiley says her children were “imprisoned” by society’s ideas about what makes a good mother and how many things in the world could harm them.

Then one day, the Smileys moved to Maine.

Life in Maine

Maine is filled with miles of lakes and forests that refuse to contain its
children. It simply cannot. And soon the Smileys discovered that the “way things used to be” can still be “the way things are” for today’s children.

GOT HERE AS SOON AS I COULD is filled with newspaper columns Smiley wrote during her first seven years in Maine. Within these short stories, readers will see glimpses of their own childhood and what they’ve always dreamed of for their children.

But wait! Readers outside of Maine should not despair.

A simpler childhood

It’s true that Maine’s environment makes over-parenting difficult, but at one point in our history, neighborhoods all over our country operated like Maine’s do—with sidewalks, parks, and parents who are willing to let go and trust.

There is a reason Maine is Vacationland and why thousands of families send their children to camps here in the summer. However, Maine’s ethos needn’t only be a respite from the world’s fast pace and privacy-fence jungle. Maine’s ethos used to be America’s, too. And it can be again