it had been; she retired from government service and devoted her time to writing. Freed from financial burdens, Carson began work on another book, focussing this time on the intricacies of life along the shoreline. She took excursions to the mangrovecoasts of Florida and returned to one of her favorite locations, the rockyshores of Maine. She fell in love with the Maine coast, and in 1953 bought a summer home in West Southport on the shore of Sheepscot Bay. The Edge of the Sea appeared in 1955 and earned Carson two more prestigious awards, the Achievement Award of the American Association of University Women and a citation from the National Council of Women of the United States. The book remained on the bestseller list for twenty weeks, and RKO Studios bought therights to it. In typical Hollywood fashion, the studio sensationalized the material and ignored scientific fact. Carson corrected some of the more egregious errors but still found the film embarrassing, even after it won an Oscar as the best full-length documentary of 1953. From 1955 to 1957, Carson concentrated on smaller projects, including a telescript, "Something about the Sky," for the Omnibus series. She also contributed a number of articles to popular magazines. In July 1956, Carson published "Help Your Child to Wonder" in the Woman's Home Companion. The article was based on her own real-life experiences, something rare for Carson. She intended to expand the article into a book and retell the story of her early life on her parent's Pennsylvania farm. After her death, the essay reappeared in 1965 as the book The Sense of Wonder. In 1956, one of the nieces Carson had raised died at age 36. Marjorie left her son Roger; Carson now had to care for him in addition to her arthritic mother, who was now eighty-eight. She legally adopted Roger that same year and began looking for a suitable place to rear the child. She built a new winter home in Silver Spring, Maryland, on an uncu...
