Chesapeake Requiem may well be the most powerful, provocative book I read all year. Earl Swift spent a year on tiny Tangier Island, deep in the Chesapeake Bay, living amongst the few hundred residents who call it home. These hardy individuals, whose numbers are dwindling by the year, primarily make their living off the water and nearly all of them can trace their lineage back to the pre-Revolutionary settlers.
Swift captures the spirit of Tangier, which is rife with contradictions, so eloquently that I practically felt I was there next to him. As the title says, Tangier Island is slowly disappearing. Never mind that the stages of disappearance can be traced to at least 1850; the bottom line is that the island likely has but a handful of years left. Like many rural places, though, the demographics are also working against the continuation of Tangier and the way of life there. As Swift notes, the end of Tangier will likely come down to a race between climate change and demographics.
Swift captures the spirit of Tangier, which is rife with contradictions, so eloquently that I practically felt I was there next to him. As the title says, Tangier Island is slowly disappearing. Never mind that the stages of disappearance can be traced to at least 1850; the bottom line is that the island likely has but a handful of years left. Like many rural places, though, the demographics are also working against the continuation of Tangier and the way of life there. As Swift notes, the end of Tangier will likely come down to a race between climate change and demographics.
As for that climate change bit: the population of Tangier Island is skeptical, and that's putting it mildly. They do agree that their island is disappearing, and they're desperate to save it, but they believe the culprit is "erosion" and not "rising sea levels" and I'll leave it to the reader to split those hairs - although Swift does a fine job of both providing the scientific background and the Tangier perspective. The federal government has been concerned about the rapid disappearance of the island as well, primarily for the migratory bird habitat it provides, and has "studied" the issue on and off for the past 20 years.
Like much of Rural America, Tangier Island was and remains Trump Country. While this may seem one contradiction too many, by the time Swift had enumerated all of the various studies and the studies of the studies and so on, I was sympathetic to the notion of wanting someone who promised to slash red tape. And build walls. Tangiermen really, really, really want a seawall, and their mayor has even gone on the record as saying maybe Washington should just build them a sea wall if the folks in the Southwest don't want one. Desperate times call for desperate arguments.
It would be easy enough for Swift to have created caricatures; presumably most of his readers won't have visited Tangier, nor perhaps have firsthand experience with many from the tiny towns that dot this country. Why not confirm the stereotypes? Yet, Swift has done a commendable job of presenting a holistic portrait of the men and women who call Tangier home. Time and again I was struck by how hard they work and how hard life is. Up and at 'em closer to midnight than daylight, as Swift observes, and not just occasionally, but every. single. day., the men work the water until either it claims them (not too uncommon, unfortunately - remember, commercial fishing is the most dangerous occupation in America) or until they physically can do it no longer.
Lest the reader have their own ideas about when that might be, Swift provides a sketch of two hale watermen working their boat in high seas, on a day when he can barely remain upright. One of the two is 81 and the other recently celebrated his 86th birthday. Crabbing is not for the faint of heart. In his year on the island, Swift witnesses heartbreaking tragedy, as well as the reaction of the town to that tragedy, which can largely be summarized as doubling down on hard work, faith, and taking care of their own.
Ah, faith. The municipal water town is painted with a cross, and I'm sure you've already guessed there's no shortage of prayer in the school. (That would be the K-12 school, enrollment 58, where the class of 2016 was uncommonly large for having 7 graduates.) There are two churches, though, and if attendance isn't mandated, the blue laws restricting Sunday commerce as well as the dry laws restricting any alcohol sales on-island are.
By the end of Chesapeake Requiem, I felt I actually knew some of the individuals, and wanted to know them better. I would say I've added Tangier to my bucket list, for the just-caught crab cakes and crab hush puppies if nothing else, but I recognize I'm unlike to make it there before it - or its denizens - disappears. At its heart, this is a book that asks its readers to think about the myriad people and cultures that comprise this country, the ways in which we fit together, and how we value one another, our beliefs, and our land. For these reasons, Chesapeake Requiem should be required reading for anyone who lives in this country or wants to understand it better.
I'd give it six stars if I could.
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