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

by Earl Swift

Overview

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, Popular Science, Bloomberg, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, Science Friday, 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

A Washington Post bestseller • An Indie Next List selection • An NPR All Things Considered and Axios "Book Club" pick

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 21^st 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062661418
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/07/2018
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	115,383
File size:	31 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Journalist Earl Swift has written five books, including The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways (2011). Since 2012 he has been a residential fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

06/15/2018
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

Library Journal

07/02/2018
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. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A detailed portrait of this distinctive community. …. The dire fate of [Tangier] island runs through Swift’s narrative. At its core, though, it’s a look at its people.

John Yang

Earl Swift has hit the trifecta sought by all writers of nonfiction but achieved by very few. The book is the fruit of deep-dive, immersive research; it is deftly written, and it raises questions that affect every person on the planet. ... A soulful portrait of a complicated, endangered slice of America.

Bill Morris

An empathetic portrait of a small and unique community and its plight under environmental duress.

Booklist

A superb piece of reporting.

Telegraph (UK)

Chesapeake Requiem is a riveting documentary. It also has the deep currents and satisfactions of a magnificent novel.

JOHN CASEY

[Swift’s] book reads as an ode to a people who are disappearing, capturing the ins and out of their everyday lives: the ways they work, speak, fight, make jokes, and vote. Taken together, Swift’s descriptions suggest that Tangier might be one of the most interesting—if strangest—places in the country.

Earther

Chesapeake Requiem immerses us in an amazing American place. A humane and difficult and supremely reported book.

CHRISTOPHER COKINOS

Wonderful, poetic, stirring writing. This lovely book is an elegy to a disappearing way of life.

CALLUM ROBERTS

This is a powerful book. Fascinating people, clinging loyally to a fascinating and lovely place, even as the waters rise—Earl Swift’s Chesapeake Requiem is a tale of our time, movingly told. Perhaps it will inspire some of us living safe on higher ground to more action on behalf of those at risk.

BILL MCKIBBEN

Earl Swift is as much a master of crafting words on the page as capturing the instructive voices on this shrinking Chesapeake island. He has written not a farewell but a commencement, not an insular but a universal story, one we all should know, of challenge, forbearance, and possibilities.

JACK E. DAVIS

"A deep dive into the past, present, and narrowing future of Tangier. ... Swift's twilit portrait of Tangier, based on a year he spent there, is immersive, sensitive, and clear-eyed. He captures the grain of the place, all its nicks and whorls."

Garden & Gun

One of the most powerful ways to tell the story of global climate change is to tell it local. And this meticulous, compassionate look at the fishermen and their families, who have for generations made a home on a tiny island in Chesapeake Bay, is a vivid portrait of what we are losing—and why we may fail to stop that loss.“

Deborah Blum

Swift does such a good, interesting job of telling the stories of the people who live on this island. … He really gets [the] hard questions about the reality of climate change and … how we make decisions as a country and as a community about what we value.

Heather Hansman

Swift paints vivid portraits of both the natural environment and the individuals and institutions of this close-knit community. ... Harrowing and moving. ... A well-rounded portrait of a rural community both dependent on and threatened by its natural environment.

Science

A provocative and respectful study of a culture that may soon be lost.

“The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018 (So Far)& Esquire

"America is about to learn what Virginians have known for decades—Earl Swift can flat-out write. A deeply moving and well-reported book."

BETH MACY

A masterful narrative of place, people, and nature, supported by the best sort of on-the-ground journalism. … In Chesapeake Requiem, Swift does what only the best environmental writers can do.

Christian Science Monitor (A Best Book of the Year)

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 Best Book of the Year)

Earl Swift has long shown a talent for locating the big and poignant stories that lay hidden in plain sight within the day-to-day lives of unsung Americans. With Chesapeake Requiem, his gift is on fine display. Here is a big story about a small place, a canary-in-the-coalmine tale that’s sad and beautiful, haunting and true.

HAMPTON SIDES

[A] sweeping historical narrative. … Intimate, meticulously reported and captivating. … Earl Swift masterfully reveals Tangier as it is. … The definitive account of what once was and of what will soon be no more.

Washington Post (A Notable Book of the Year)

The best nonfiction book of 2018. … I can’t remember a book in recent years that taught me quite so much. Every page is vivid and rich. … A model for what serious reportage should be.

Stephen L. Carter

One of the most powerful ways to tell the story of global climate change is to tell it local. And this meticulous, compassionate look at the fishermen and their families, who have for generations made a home on a tiny island in Chesapeake Bay, is a vivid portrait of what we are losing—and why we may fail to stop that loss.“

Garden &Gun

A masterful narrative of place, people, and nature.”

Christian Science Monitor

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.

“The Best New Adventure Books for Fall” Outside

[A] sweeping historical narrative. … Intimate, meticulously reported and captivating. … Earl Swift masterfully reveals Tangier as it is. … The definitive account of what once was and of what will soon be no more.

Washington Post

2018-05-10
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.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More