Ernest and Pauline DeRaps, the authors of Maine Lighthouse Keeping Memories Told In Two-Sided Book", will be delivering a slide show with 40 slides reproduced from the book during the festivities of the 13th Annual Windjammer Weekend.

"The book is unique in that it tells the same story but from two different perspectives as you turn the book over.

Not only does the book tell the same story from two different perspectives it even has two separate covers. One side of the book is titled Lighthouse Keeping and is written by Ernest DeRaps. Then you flip the book over and the other side is titled Light HouseKeeping, which is Pauline's side of the story.

The book offers a rare and refreshing look at what life was like at Maine's lighthouses when the stations were still staffed by keepers, "Something that is now a thing of the past," said Tim Harrison editor of Lighthouse Digest and president of FogHorn Publishing, the firm that published the book.

The DeRaps originally simply wanted to write down their memories for their children, but others kept telling them that they had lived a part of history that will never again be repeated or duplicated and they should write a book. That's when the idea for the book came into being. But they wanted the book to be different from other books.

After a stint in the Navy in World War II, DeRaps joined the Coast Guard and as described in the book by Pauline, Ernie asked her, "How would you like to live in a lighthouse?" He said they would be living at a family station on Monhegan Island and she had never even heard of Monhegan.

Following their life at Monhegan they were transferred to Fort Point Lighthouse in Stockton Springs, which was Pauline's favorite assignment. However, they lost their family lighthouse life when Ernie was transferred to Green Island's Heron Neck Lighthouse at the end of 1959. At that time Heron Neck was what was called in those days a stag station and families were not allowed and Pauline and the kids lived on another island. After Heron Neck, they were transferred to Browns Head Lighthouse on Vinalhaven where again the family was together.

DeRaps said that when he and Pauline originally wrote the book it was several years in the making. "We wrote and rewrote, we went through all our colored slides to pick out just the right ones, researched data that although we knew it, we still needed to edit the facts while remembering our past."

Ernie, 78, says he and Pauline who have been married for 55 wonderful years and live in Richmond and have six children, nine grandchildren and two great-grand-children, are now having the time of their lives sharing the stories and memories of lighthouse life with so many others.