Louise Dickinson Rich, 1903-1991, is considered the preeminent Bridgewater, Massachusetts author. She moved to Bridgewater at the age of 2 and lived here until she was 20. Again in the '50's she became a resident for 8 years. She attended Bridgewater State College, wrote various adult and children's books and received the Caldecott Award for Children's Literature. Louise Dickinson Rich not only lived in Bridgewater but wrote of her childhood in Bridgewater in her novel Innocence under the Elms.

Books by Louise Dickinson Rich

We Took to the Woods, 1942

Happy the Land, 1946

Start of the Trail, 1949

My Neck of the Woods, 1950

Trail to the North, 1952

Only Parent, 1953

Innocence Under the Elms, 1955

The Coast of Maine, 1956

The Peninsula, 1958

Mindy, 1959

The Natural World of Louise Dickinson Rich, 1962.

State 'o Maine, 1964

Children's books by Louise Dickinson Rich

The First Book of New England, 1957

The First Book of Early Settlers, 1959

The First Book of New World Explorers, 1960

The First Book of the China Clippers, 1962

The First Book of the Vikings, 1962

The First Book of the Fur Trade, 1965

The Kennebec River, 1967

The First Book of Lumbering, 1967

Star Island Boy, 1968

Three of a Kind, 1970

King Philip's War, 1675-76, published in 1972

Summer at High Kingdom, 1975

In 1942, from her home at Forest Lodge on the Rapid River, Louise Dickinson Rich captured this world in her national best-seller, We Took to the Woods.

The book (along with the two other popular volumes listed below she wrote at Forest Lodge) describes log drives and Maine guides, huge native trout and salmon, and the spectacular wild lakes that make up the famous Rangeley chain. It describes a place apart, a place that today we would call pure fantasy. It was a world that only a privileged few could experience first-hand.

Half a century after Louise Dickinson Rich and her Chicago businessman husband made off for the remote town of Middle Dam to raise a family, this book remains as captivating today as then.