Earl Swift, an author of six previous books and a former correspondent for The Virginian-Pilot, immersed himself for the better part of two years with the 481 inhabitants of Tangier. In recent years, they’ve garnered some media attention for the paradox of largely rejecting sea-level rise while simultaneously suffering its wrath. Tiny, waterlogged Tangier Island, off the coast of Virginia in Chesapeake Bay, is full of people of faith. 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.BOOK REVIEW - “Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island,” by Earl Swift (Dey Street Books, 448 pages).

Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.Ĭhesapeake 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. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. 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. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing.

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. 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 21 st century and another in times long passed. Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. An NPR All Things Considered and Axios 'Book Club' pick.'THE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR.' - Stephen L.

'A MASTERFUL NARRATIVE.' - Christian Science Monitor.

'BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING AND TRUE.' - Hampton Sides 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.Ī BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, NPR, Outside, Smithsonian, Bloomberg, Science Friday, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, and Kirkus

Chesapeake requiem by earl swift