Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island

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.)