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.
