Finding Moosewood, Finding God: What Happened When a TV Newsman Abandoned His Career for Life on an Island

For twenty-five years, millions of Americans watched Jack Perkins on NBC News as a correspondent, commentator, and anchorman. People were familiar with his face, his bearing, and his rich, reassuring bass.

Yet at the age of fifty-two and at the height of his career, Jack Perkins disappeared from the public eye and moved with his wife, Mary Jo, to a bare-necessities cabin on an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine. This isolated home they came to call Moosewood was the setting for Jack a...