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Summary
Summary
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, NPR, Outside, Smithsonian, Bloomberg, Science Friday, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, and Kirkus
"BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING AND TRUE." -- Hampton Sides * "GORGEOUS. A TRULY REMARKABLE BOOK." -- Beth Macy * "GRIPPING. FANTASTIC." -- Outside * "CAPTIVATING." -- Washington Post * "POWERFUL." -- Bill McKibben * "VIVID. HARROWING AND MOVING." -- Science * "A MASTERFUL NARRATIVE." -- Christian Science Monitor * "THE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR." -- Stephen L. Carter/Bloomberg
Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation's largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water--the same water that for generations has made Tangier's fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world.
Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year--meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.
Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island's past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier's people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by--and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.
Author Notes
Earl Swift lives in Norfolk with his daughter, Saylor.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Swift empathetically examines the complicated history of Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay, which he calls "a community unlike any in America." Swift (The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways) notes Tangier's unique qualities: "Here live people so isolated for so long that they have their own style of speech, a singsong brogue of old words and phrases, twisted vowels, odd rhythms," and the island's centuries-old crabbing industry dictates everyday schedules. Crabbers go out on the bay in the early morning hours, so buyers, crab processing companies, and marine police "synchronize their workdays to the watermen's schedule." When the crabbing industry hits an inevitable rough patch, the consequences can be significant. So can younger generations leaving Tangier and the effects of global climate change and rising sea levels: "Every year sees the Chesapeake soak a little more upland into marsh, and drown a little more marsh into open water," leaving it careening toward being uninhabitable. With understanding and insight, Swift presents a thought-provoking portrait of Tangier Island as it once was, as it is now, and as it could someday become. Agent: David Black, David Black Literary Agency. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Land and culture erode on an island in the Chesapeake Bay.Journalist Swift (Auto Biography: A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, 2014, etc.) spent more than a year on Tangier Island, among crab fishermen and their families, in 2000 and again in late fall 2015. In a graceful melding of history, nature writing, and perceptive cultural commentary, the author offers an affectionate portrait of the island and its "God-fearing, self-reliant," close-knit residentsnow numbering under 500. Although Tangier currently faces new social problemsdrugs, alcohol (on an island defiantly dry), and loss of young people to the mainlandthe island "is more Norman Rockwell than real American town, with morals intact, air fresh, and entertainments wholesome." When Swift returned to the island in 2015 from his home in Virginia, he was particularly concerned with how Tangier was dealing with climate change that threatens to raise sea levels. Already, the island has shrunk from 2,163 acres, as documented in 1850, to 789. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicted that about a third of remaining acreage would vanish within the next 50 years without major intervention. Residents, however, ascribe topographical changes "solely to wind-driven waves, not climate change," refusing to believe that accelerating winds were "a symptom of a global phenomenon." Still, they feared for their future as crab fishermen. With hundreds of millions of crabs swimming by the island each year, Tangier supplies restaurants all along the east coast; New York, for example, pays handsomely for soft-shell crabs. Swift's profiles of individuals are sharply drawn and empathetic, and he captures their frustration with government bureaucracy as they hope for federal financing of a sea wall. It will take a miracle, writes the author, for the Army Corps of Engineers and Congress to act "before a storm muscles up the bay and renders the whole thing moot."A well-rendered narrative about how one specific island's fate stands as a warning for all coastal regions. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay has attracted journalists for decades owing to its genealogy most inhabitants descend from the island's original settlers; its variety of English, which is linguistically traceable to those 1700s settlers; its Methodist religiosity; its oyster and blue-crab fishery; and for Swift, its role as bellwether for rising sea levels. Tangier Island is measurably shrinking and will, absent remediation, disappear by 2100, according to environmental studies. So Swift decided to embed himself in Tangier society from 2016 to 2017, and this work recounts his observations. For starters, he accompanied crabbers on their boats and learned about collecting and marketing fresh crabs. Back on Tangier Island, he attended social gatherings, church services, funerals, and a graduation ceremony and discovered what various individuals think about their island's future. Swift tempers his melancholy over the fact that Tangier and the way of life it supports are in inexorable decline with information about possible ways to stem Tangier's physical erosion with jetties, seawalls, and landfills. An empathetic portrait of a small and unique community and its plight under environmental stress.--Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Journalist Swift (The Big Roads) documents the nearly two years he spent living on Tangier Island in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, a unique community that scientists say may be the first place in the United States to cease to exist because of climate change. With less than 1,000 residents and an economy revolving around blue crab fishing, Tangier loses 15 feet of shoreline a year. Island residents have developed their own ways of living, adapting to the isolating environment away from the mainland. Swift's journey through Tangier provides a firsthand account of island living through the words of the islanders themselves, sprinkled with historical anecdotes and scientific observations. He shares a close portrait of the people that make up this threatened land and its one-of-a-kind way of life. VERDICT A moving account of a vanishing place, sure to satisfy anyone concerned with climate change, environmental issues, and -anthropology.-Venessa Hughes, Buffalo, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.