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.
REVIEW
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Author Talk Summary
**Just want to say I did the colors that way on the featured image because those are the colors used in my library’s logo** (METHOD TO MY MADNESS)
It was library bookclub night on March 6th to discuss this book, and not only were we discussing this book, but we were discussing it with the author. So! That was fun, and this was alls our Community Page Reads pick which means that all the branches of our libraries (We span multiple counties) were reading this.
The book was fascinating. Swift lived on Tangier with the local for 14 months, so he was really giving us a pretty in-depth look compared to what most news stories have been regarding the island (and he’d done a couple of articles there as a journalist). Tangier island is unique in that it’s one of the two remaining habitable islands in Chesapeake bay and that its isolation has meant that it is truly a different way of life. They’re dealing with their island disappearing and the speed of that means it’s that Tangier Island will soon only be part of the past instead of a living record of it.
The fascinating part of this was seeing how the Islanders were essentially a theocracy. Not only that, combined with their set of beliefs, to them this is simply erosion and Climate Change is not a factor in their island disappearing.
I’ll be frank, an isolated community of 470-ish (460 really at the time and now about 360) on an island in Chesapeake Bay (VA for this Island) is exactly what one might think on some stereotypes. Which I’ll leave unsaid. This book wasn’t about viewing them through any one lens though. Swift gives us a very balanced view of the islanders. People who are stuck in their ways but who also rise up to a rescue in a storm for one of their own. He’s written about their downfalls and the things that make them still relatable on some level and he puts it all in a rather easy to digest manner without belittling us the readers or them the ‘study.’
This can be a dry read for some, firstly it is nonfiction and secondly Swift gives us their daily lives. We are talking some times getting a break down of the morning routine to the end of the work day. I was skeptical about that at first, I usually read nonfiction much slower than any other kind of book and I’m not big on toy details all the time. But after about the first section of the book I thought it was a nice touch. It didn’t bog it down the way I thought it would (for me).
The premise of this book isn’t how to save the island or what will be done to help it, it’s what’s occurred, what will occur without aid and if it should be aided or not.
The best part of hearing Swift talk was how he integrated himself enough but still maintained that necessary distance and hearing him speak of how the island fares now. Bleak, but still information I wanted to know going into this talk after reading the book.
Swift poses this to us, if it can be, should Tangier be saved? They’re being called the first possible Climate Change Refugees (whether they see it that way or not) and we have to wonder, if Tangier is the first step for us (at least in the USA) then what’s next?
SO on that happy note! 4/5 Big cups of coffee and you can expect me to read some more of his stuff!
The Caffeinated Reader 
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