Growing up on an island off the coast of Maine in the 1970s and 80s, Audrey Ryan's reality was far from the middle-class ideal portrayed on television. Her parents, part of the back-to-the-land movement, lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Her father, a fisherman, would return from days at sea smelling of sweat and fish, his catch sometimes mingled with bizarre treasures dredged from the deep.
A Childhood Forged in Rural Isolation
The family's early years were spent in a one-room cottage without indoor plumbing. Later, they occupied a dilapidated farmhouse, its woodstove barely heating half the uninsulated space. Life revolved around stacking wood, growing vegetables, and tending to animals. For Ryan, this was simply the only childhood she knew, one filled with roaming the woods and building forts. Yet, as she grew older, a creeping sense of shame took hold. She became acutely aware of her family's old house, beat-up cars, and secondhand clothes, especially when contrasted with the cookie-cutter subdivisions and affluent summer visitors.
This embarrassment solidified into a burning desire to escape. At 14, she left for a boarding school scholarship in Massachusetts, suddenly immersed in a world of wealth and privilege. Summers were spent working in a coastal art gallery, serving elites like the Rockefellers and Martha Stewart. This exposure only fueled her ambition for upward mobility, leading her to college out of state, graduate school in Boston, and a career far from the Maine coast.
The Bombshell That Lured Her Back Home
Everything changed during a visit home in her mid-20s. Over coffee, her father casually revealed a secret from his past: in the early 1980s, he and other fishermen had hauled bricks of hashish up in their scallop dredges. To prove it, he showed her a hardened, dark green-and-black chunk he'd kept for decades. Stunned and curious, Ryan embarked on a decade-long quest to uncover the truth.
Returning to Maine each summer, she tracked down fishermen at marinas, bait shops, and diners. Every one of them had a story about the "sea hash" they'd accidentally caught in the early '80s. She discovered that Maine's vast, jagged 3,500-mile coastline—with its remote harbors and coves—had been a hotbed for international drug smuggling throughout the 1970s and early '80s. The problem grew so significant that the DEA transferred an agent from New York City to address it.
Reconciling Two Worlds and a Complicated Legacy
This investigative journey became a process of reframing her own history. Researching and writing about the sea hash phenomenon—culminating in a 2023 Boston Globe Magazine cover story—helped her see her community not as a source of shame, but as a place with a raw, layered, and compelling past. She bought a house near where she grew up, now living there seasonally—an ironic full circle for someone who once longed to escape.
Today, Ryan navigates a dual identity, feeling suspended between the rural working-class world of her childhood and the affluent suburban life she built. She is keenly aware of the privilege her own children enjoy, a childhood she "once could only have dreamed of." Yet, she has learned to embrace the "plastic spoon" upbringing that forged her resilience. Her story underscores the deep class divides in America, particularly between coastal elites and year-round rural communities, a tension she witnessed firsthand on her Maine island.
Audrey Ryan's work, including her forthcoming book Downeast Goldmine and a planned podcast, continues to explore this intersection of fishing, smuggling, and personal history. Her journey proves that sometimes, understanding where you're from requires first leaving it behind, only to be pulled back by the tides of a forgotten past.
