When a Nor’easter tore through Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2015, author and former journalist Earl Swift had one prevailing thought.
“If things are this bad on the mainland, then they must be pretty damn dire out in Tangier.”
Tangier is a small island off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay that had been the subject of a few stories that Swift reported on for the Virginia Pilot in the 1990s. The thought of how the tiny island was faring prompted Swift to return to Tangier. Three years later, he published Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, the Rare Reads book pick for January 2025, and the subject of Rare’s most recent author talk.
Swift joined Rare’s Kristi Marciano, who leads Rare Reads, for a conversation about the book, Swift’s reporting and research practices, and the difficulties of communicating climate change to a skeptical audience.
With a population of fewer than 500 people who predominantly hold onto simpler way of life, Tangier always struck Swift as “pretty quirky.”
“The island didn’t get its first phones until 1966,” he recalled.
One notable fact about Tangier stood out to Swift—since the 1850s, Tangier had lost two-thirds of its landmass due to climate change. The people of Tangier, however, had a hard time grappling with the concept of climate change from a political, social, and theological point of view.
“People would point out places where they would play as kids that were now off the coast, way out in the water,” said Swift. “This was happening in the span of a single human lifetime.”
Swift went to Tangier knowing he had a challenge ahead of him. He had to get a community predominantly skeptical of outsiders comfortable with a reporter hanging around.
“I went to every baby shower, wedding, and church service,” Swift said as he described the process of gaining trust within the community. “I wanted to be a fly on the wall, and I had to get people to be comfortable with seeing the fly.”
The result is a beautifully constructed narrative that weaves three threads together: Swift’s year on Tangier, the island’s history, and the science of climate change. Throughout the story, Swift details the island’s grappling with change in a tumultuous time and finding a resolve against all odds.
“What you see on Tangier is that this disaster, like previous ones, will be stopped by divine intervention,” said Swift. “That divine intervention might come in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but it will be divine intervention nonetheless.”
Click here to watch the whole conversation.