A classic of Chesapeake Bay literature, Tom Horton's An Island Out of Time chronicles the three years Horton and his family spent on Smith Island, a marshy archipelago in the middle of Maryland's famous estuary. The result is an intimate portrait of a deeply traditional community that lived much as their ancestors did three hundred years before, attuned to the habits of blue crab, oyster, and waterfowl. In a new afterword for this edition, Horton brings the story of Smith Island, and its people, up to the present.

“This is the hopeful book we all need right now. I loved it!”—Emily Giffin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lies That Bind As Seen on the TODAY SHOW A Southern Living Best Beach Read * A PopSugar Best Book of May * An Us Weekly Summer Beach Staple * A Frolic Under-the-Radar Book of May * An OK Magazine Best Summer Beach Read * An EW.com Best Book of Spring * A Country Living Can't Miss Beach Read * A LibraryReads Pick for May * An Emily Giffin Book Club pick Sometimes all you need is one person to really see you. Piper Parrish's life on Frick Island—a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay—is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: Her darling husband, Tom, is dead. When Tom's crab boat capsized and his body wasn't recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her, cooking him breakfast, walking him to the docks each morning, meeting him for their standard Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab. And what were the townspeople to do but go along with their beloved widowed Piper? Anders Caldwell’s career is not going well. A young ambitious journalist, he’d rather hoped he’d be a national award-winning podcaster by now, rather than writing fluff pieces for a small town newspaper. But when he gets an assignment to travel to the remote Frick Island and cover their boring annual Cake Walk fundraiser, he stumbles upon a much more fascinating tale: an entire town pretending to see and interact with a man who does not actually exist. Determined it’s the career-making story he’s been needing for his podcast, Anders returns to the island to begin covert research and spend more time with the enigmatic Piper—but he has no idea out of all the lives he’s about to upend, it’s his that will change the most. USA Today bestselling author Colleen Oakley delivers an unforgettable love story about an eccentric community, a grieving widow, and an outsider who slowly learns that sometimes faith is more important than the facts.

Photographer Jay Fleming turned his attention to Smith and Tangier Islands - the Chesapeake Bay's last inhabited 'water-locked' islands. Fleming has made countless trips to the islands to document the unique way of life and environment that have been shaped by isolation and the waters of the Chesapeake. This collection of photographs will fill the pages of Fleming's second book, Island Life. This body work comes at an important time for the islands, as their populations continue to decline and the unrelenting forces of the bay threaten the working working waterfronts that have sustained the communities for centuries. Fleming hopes that his photography will immerse readers in the Island Life and capture a crucial moment in time for the Chesapeake's most unique communities.

An appendix documents the many small islands that have dropped entirely from view since the seventeenth century.

Seventy-five miles southeast of Washington, D.C., in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, accessible only by boat, is tiny Smith Island, where a 300-year-old culture has survived in singular isolation. For a quarter of a century in this unique setting, Frances Kitching operated a small, widely renowned restaurant and inn. Susan Stiles Dowell, working closely with her, gathered more than one hundred of her recipesmany of them from the generation-to-generation oral tradition. This is more than just a regional cookbook. In Mrs. Dowells sensitive and luminous telling of the lore and lure of this remote island, and in forty evocative photographs, colorful people and places come to life.

Smith Island, the largest Maryland island in Chesapeake Bay, remains one of the most interesting communities on the Atlantic coast. Smith Islanders speak a sort of Tidewater English, are devoted to the Methodist faith, and maintain an intense relationship with the waters of the bay. For generations, they have relied on fishing, oystering, and crabbing for their livelihood and have developed workboats that reflect the conditions - both natural and cultural - of local waters. In The Workboats of Smith Island, Paula J. Johnson looks extensively at the remarkable variety of boats - documenting in fascinating detail their design, construction, and use - and the watermen who depend on them. Johnson identifies the three vessel types most common on Smith Island today: crab-scraping boats, deadrise workboats, and skiffs. Every Smith Islander, she notes, owns at least one workboat, and many have two or even three, requiring each for a different purpose - harvesting "peelers" (blue crabs in various stages of molting), oystering or crab potting, and providing basic transportation. Johnson talks with Smith Island's watermen and boatbuilders, as well as their families and neighbors, about the history and future of the island and about the boats that dominate the island's cultural landscape. She includes dozens of photographs and drawings of Smith Island's distinctive watercraft. The result is a singular portrait of a community inextricably linked to the water.

This richly illustrated, informative, and inviting book intertwines two fascinating stories of discovery. The first, among the earliest classics of New World adventure, recounts Captain John Smith's exploration of Chesapeake Bay 400 years ago; the second revisits this stunning landscape as it is today-- both to showcase its still-unspoiled splendors and to issue a timely warning of looming threats to its vibrant but fragile ecology. Dozens of dazzling full-color contemporary photographs evoke the Chesapeake spirit in all its many moods, while a wonderfully wide-ranging selection of archival images span the four centuries since John Smith first sailed, rowed, and wandered its woods and waterways, mapping the wilderness shores of an untamed America. The author, a veteran naturalist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, has spent decades leading tours and teaching classes about the region. An ideal guide, he shares both his delight in the Bay's glorious diversity and his deep concern for its future. In addition, his unique blend of experience, environmental sensitivity, and historical expertise offers modern visitors a rare opportunity to discover the Chesapeake as Smith did so long ago, leaving beaten paths and familiar waters behind to learn why Congress will soon designate it as the first of America's official National Historic Water Trails. For history buffs, conservationists, armchair travelers, tourists planning a trip, and anyone who simply loves first-rate nature photography, this beautiful book more than meets the high standard readers have come to expect from National Geographic.