OUR CROZE NEST, by John Gould, Blackberry Books, Nobleboro, 213 pages, $13.95 paperback.

“If there’s a humorist at a party, he’s the sad one off in the corner,” John Gould says in his new novel, “Our Croze Nest.” Such a comment from Maine’s pre-eminent humorist writer may come as a surprise to the legions of Gould fans who expect him to be making light always of most things human; but then, these same faithful fans may be even more surprised by this latest of Gould books — his 29th, if anyone’s counting.

It’s a poignant story of young love, for one thing; and the “croze nest” of the title refers to this outbuilding, or cooperage, where they used to manufacture barrels on this Maine farm and that becomes the lovers’ favorite rendezvous spot from the time they are children. He, the narrator, is a summer boy from Philadelphia, and she’s a local Maine girl, originally from Monhegan Island, whose parents work for the boy’s folks.

As the author explains in his introduction, titled “The Trilogy of Morning River Farm:”

“This belated episode completes the trilogy of Morning River Farm, stories of far down east on the coast of Maine. The young man who relates the story explains the delay by saying he had to wait to see how it came out. `No Other Place,’ the first of the three volumes, told how Jabez and Martha Knight came to make a home in colonial days `halfway between French and English.’ That is, between New France and New England. It tells how they were joined by Jules and Marie-Paule Marcoux, from Nova Scotia, and how the two couples lived together in peace and prosperity in the midst of political turbulence. The second volume, `The Wines of Pentagoet,’ pursues the generation of Elzada, daughter of Jabez and Martha, who was beautiful, wealthy, bilingual, and gracious. She introduced flip to the Maine coast, a beverage more elegant than calibogus, which had hitherto been staple. Manny the Portagee then lived on Razor Island, and smuggled with Father Hermidore, a Jesuit based on the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Father Hermidore came to Maine to marry the lovely Elzada to her sea-captain friend, Lieutenant Alonzo Plaice, once of HMN but now a coaster of much knowledge and many interests. An amusing scene develops when Elzada simultaneously translates the French wedding ceremony into English for the bridegroom, who doesn’t understand French.

“The second of the trilogy also explains the miracle of the noble wines of Pentagoet, which were turned from Bordeaux quality to salt sea water between Bagaduce and Boston, causing anguish in Boston.

“Our third story brings us into today, when summer people have discovered Down East. Please meet Cousin Snood halfway. He’ll go the other half gladly, and you can honk Monhegan Island-style.”

Throughout the novel, the characters are forever “honking a flip,” or drinking a beverage that Gould describes as “just what a dry and dusty traveler needed.” The “flip sweetner” was “made in advance with eggs and cream, and sweetened with molasses or maple syrup, or in some places dried pumpkin seeds. At taverns … some of the flip sweetner would be put in a mug and the mug filled with beer and rum, half-and-half, and then the mixture was stirred with a hot poker from the fireplace.”

Besides Cousin Snood, “Our Croze Nest” is crammed with Gould’s colorful Maine characters, such as the black guy who could roll “a full barrel of dark rum down a plank into a big house cellar, bringing it to a halt ready for the spigot. He’d get the barrel rolling and then steer it with one foot. He was the one who had his flip and then sang songs of Marseilles Harbor all evening with Jules and Marie-Paule Marcoux.”

There’s the theme, too, of being native to Maine and having like the narrator “the odious mishap of being from away.” Nell Thomas, one of the major characters and the mother of Han, who is the young girl in love with the narrator, “was always outspoken about people `from away,’ and constantly deplored the exploitation of honest Maine people by summercaters and newcomers.”

Having been born in Medford, Mass., Gould himself is “from away,” but he has spent most of his 89 years in Maine living and writing about Friendship, Lisbon (where he ran his Enterprise newspaper), and now Gorham. He spent some of his growing-up years in Freeport, too, and graduated from Bowdoin College. For many years, he has contributed a popular regular column to the Christian Science Monitor.

The old master’s knowing touches are still very much evident in “Our Croze Nest,” especially in matters of humor and language. His similes like “soft as a custard” and “smooth as a schoolmarm’s leg” complement and enhance his wonderful, salty way of spinning a yarn.

One learns, too, not just about how to make a flip; but what constitutes a good haddock chowder and how cunners make the best chowder of all. In one of Gould’s most amusing chapters, we learn how to “lanch” and scull a dory.

One wonders if the Monhegan fisherman still practice the old rituals that Gould describes, such as all beginning their fishing season at the same time in January and making sure they all carry a bottle of Black Diamond Rum in the cuddies of their sloops.

“Our Croze Nest” is a lovely book from a wise and wonderfully talented storyteller. It’s full of colorful Maine history and characters worth meeting. Longtime Gould fans may be surprised by the ending, but they’ll be smiling, too.