Once Upon an Island

This chronicle of a woman's life on a small island in Boston Harbor encompasses both typical family stories and unusual tales about living in a remote location situated across the bay from a booming metropolis. Silvia's father, an Army tailor, arrived on Peddock's Island with the military in 1904, and his family continued to live there for nearly 100 years. The author herself was born on the island in 1917. (She recently died, and her daughter finished this book.) Silvia's memoir presents a conventional story of growing up in a military atmosphere--going to parades on summer Sunday afternoons, playing inter-post baseball games, attending school bundled in long underwear and starched petticoats in the winter. The one exceptional aspect of her narrative is the island's situation as an insular community: Silvia and her schoolmates had to take a boat to school, for instance, and could get ice cream only when a 100-pound chunk of ice was ferried over to keep the ice chests cool. Although it's a fairly straightforward and dry account of life on an Army post, Silvia's book gives a fine snapshot of a bygone era.