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Chesapeake Requiem

A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
A New York Times–bestselling 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,BloombergScience FridayChristian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, and Kirkus Reviews
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 twenty-first 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 US 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.
"In a gripping, 400-page tome, Swift gracefully outlines the harsh inevitability of global warming and how the people on its front lines try to keep living their lives in its face. . . . Fantastic." —Outside 
"A well-rounded portrait of a rural community both dependent on and threatened by its natural environment." —Science
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    • Kirkus

      June 1, 2018
      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 residents--now numbering under 500. Although Tangier currently faces new social problems--drugs, alcohol (on an island defiantly dry), and loss of young people to the mainland--the 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(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 2, 2018
      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.

    • Library Journal

      June 15, 2018

      A 1.3-square-mile scrap of land in Chesapeake Bay, proclaimed the soft-shell crab capital of the world, Tangier Island is just a few feet about sea level and is losing 15 feet of shoreline a year. Poised to disappear, it will be America's first victim of climate change. Veteran Virginian-Pilot reporter Swift, who lived on the island for two years, portrays a community numbering under 1,000 (with its own distinct dialect) that will disappear, too. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Library Journal

      June 15, 2018

      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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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