Why would anyone choose to leave a successful career in the city to commit to a life of poverty in the Maine woods? This is the story of how one woman did just that. Janet Dexter sketched celebrities for the New York Times and other newspapers in New York and Boston in the 1920s and 1930s. Her drawings appeared with critiques and reviews of plays, operas, and concerts. In the summers, she would enjoy cooler temperatures in Maine, where she breathed in the pine-scented air and local culture. She was educated and well traveled. How, then, had she come to marry Cola Storer, a backwoods widower with fifteen children, and spend her life on his farm with no electricity or modern plumbing? Why was she always so cheerful?