An Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake

Although the archipelago known as Smith Island sits in Chesapeake Bay, just off Maryland's eastern shore, it is in some ways a place lost in time and space. Lacking a police force, a high school, or a hospital, it still carries the flavor of another era. People earn a tough living from crabbing, which means 18-hour work days for six months of the year, and they still speak a heavily accented language that some scholars believe dates back to Elizabethan times. In 1987, Tom Horton, an environmental writer for the Baltimore Sun, moved with his family to this 300-year-old community. This thoughtful, well-written book is his record of the two years they spent there.