BOOTHBAY HARBOR, Maine — Nearly three decades ago Jerry Farnham was working as a sternman on his father’s lobster boat in Boothbay Harbor. Eyeing the people on the deck of a gorgeous yacht not far away, he began to wonder: “What if they just want to be like normal people? You know, maybe they want to come and watch lobster boat races. Maybe they want to go lobstering.”
The thought stuck with Farnham, who was only 16 years old, and with it came another notion. He wanted to take that idea and turn it into a novel, one set in Boothbay Harbor and filled with characters like the people he’d grown up with.
It was easier said than done.
“I wrote a couple chapters here and there through the years,” he recalls. “And I’d get discouraged, or I’d listen to what naysayers were saying, and I’d crumple it up and throw it away.”
Writing is hard work, and it helps when a writer gets a pat on the back, an encouraging word. Those small but crucial gestures had not come Farnham’s way, especially when he was growing up.
“I had a fifth-grade teacher call me stupid,” he says. “I had my freshman English teacher say I wouldn’t get anywhere. And for years I let that stand in my way.”
Seven years ago, Farnham was working as a marine diesel mechanic in a boatyard, and he turned to his manuscript yet again, determined to keep going until he had finished the story. This time he succeeded.
Over the years, as he wrestled with the project and tried to tame his self-doubt, Farnham was motivated by several goals. His aim was to write the book, get it printed, and then have a book signing at his hometown bookstore, Sherman’s in Boothbay Harbor.
After checking the first two boxes, he was thrilled at the prospect of making the third one a reality. One day in June of this year, he sat down at a table in Sherman’s and signed copies of his novel “Red at Night.”
“People were coming by,” he said, “people that knew me saying congratulations and then people that didn’t know me looking at the book and saying, oh, yeah, we’ll take a copy.”
He shakes his head in wonder as he thinks back to that day. “It was” he said gratefully, “one of the top 10 moments of my life.”