Have you ever read a book and wished it was your story? The Summer of Cecily is that kind of book. Magically, Nan Lincoln makes her six-week adventure raising an abandoned seal pup feel like your story, too.

With humor, compassion and an incredible gift for storytelling, she takes the reader on a journey, from the first life-and-death struggle to get the starving pup to feed, to the unexpected dilemma of what to do witha baby seal who adapts so well to a life with humans. Car and wheel barrow rides, gardening, television watching, and living in a log house; the growing seal begins to think she is human, too. It is up to her new mother to teach the pup how to be a seal again and how to live in the ocean, to swim, eat fish, and socialize with other seals.

The reader will learn, along with Cecily, what it takes to be a harbor seal. The Summer of Cecily is a heart-warming and inspiring, true tale about the meeting of a creature of the land and a creature of the sea, of falling in love and, ultimately, having to say good-bye.

It is also the story of a very special place, where an ordinary day can turn into an extraordinary adventure. This first complete portrait of the artist behind the legendary dresses is published to coincide with the first muse-um retrospective of designs by this American fashion icon.

Nan Lincoln still lives on Mount Desert Island where she is the arts editor, a feature writer and reporter for the Bar Harbor Times.

Steven Katona is the President of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.