The woman behind the lens of the exquisite book Fleur Weymouth Photographs is also the woman who initiated the statewide movement leading to the unprecedented 1971 Scenic Roads Law in New Hampshire.

Massachusetts adopted the identical law two years later, the same law that today is a model of protection for designated roads of beauty across the country.

She used her former married name Florence Block to get the Scenic Roads bill through the New Hampshire Legislature committees and ultimately signed into law.

Known now 36 years later as Fleur Weymouth, her lush book of gentle portraits, abstracted landscapes, flowers in eternal flush and other powerful lives of the Earth tell of Weymouth’s persistent effort to honor and continue the beauty.

While Helicon Nine photography editor, Weymouth wrote of her camera as a fish net to catch the world in: "You never know what you come up with."

She tries to find the essence of her subjects: "It’s the thing inside the thing, and how do you get there? If it’s at all possible to leave behind even a fragment of your perceptions of the world — it should be done."

Rich and Ellen Chasse, writer-friendly owners and operators of Kennebunk Book Port in Kennebunkport, Maine, know a good year when they rent it. The dockside building housing their must-visit bookstore was built the year the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Julia Older signed her historical novel This Desired Place at Kennebunk Book Port on July 7 — and all was up-to-date and appropriate. This Desired Place, second book of her Isles of Shoals Trilogy, received the 2007 gold medal for Best Northeast Regional Fiction (New England and New York) from Independent Publisher Book Awards.