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Author Q&A: Sometimes an Island Book by Ellen Meeropol | Sea Crow Press
- Sea Crow Press
- 12 hours ago
- 4 min read
A mosaic novel of family ties, climate upheaval, and resilience.
Publication Date: March 3, 2026 | 978-1961864504 (paperback) | Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5
Sometimes an Island is a novel by Ellen Meeropol published by Sea Crow Press. It follows a family across generations, from fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe to facing climate crisis and rising seas in New England, to explore how communities adapt and survive together amid upheaval.
My hope in this novel is that the increasing danger of climate disaster might help people bridge [the deep] divisions [in our society].
What drew you to place a pogrom-driven flight from a shtetl and a future shaped by rising seas in conversation with each other? What did that reveal to you about exile across generations?
My involvement with the current immigration justice movement has made me more aware of the long history of people migrating to escape violence or prejudice. We are in an urgent situation now, but these issues aren't new. Writing these stories is a way to understand the past and the present more deeply, from the perspective of characters from very different backgrounds and situations.
I'm curious about how the loss of everything familiar and safe affects us, and how we can carry the memories of the past with us as we build a future.
Memory—personal, inherited, and communal—threads through the novel. How do the stories people carry influence the ways your characters respond to crisis and imagine what comes next?
The question of how our old stories influence us fascinates me. I think about my Russian grandparents who fled anti-Semitic pogroms and came to this country. They wouldn't talk about their previous lives, so I've had to use my imagination to write their stories.
As fiction writers, we often give objects the power to carry those memories; that's the role of the Matryoshka dolls in this novel. They are both very personal to the characters and carry a universality in their history.
The island setting demands attention to weather, water, and limited resources. How does living so closely with the natural world shape the values and daily choices of the community you imagine?
The island in the novel, once a haven for those fleeing pogroms, becomes a perilous place. At the mercy of rising sea levels and the need to import many essentials, it changes from a place of refuge to a place no longer able to sustain life.
The characters build a new community in rural inland Maine, a setting with its own challenges. Those of us who dwell in towns and cities are disturbingly out of touch with the natural world and what survival demands of us: how do we heat our homes, grow our food, find fresh water? How do we clothe ourselves and treat common illnesses? These questions feel increasingly urgent to me.
I wonder if once the profit motive is disrupted by external forces, people might forge communities built on cooperation. Perhaps it's our best chance of survival.
The community that forms in the novel brings together people with very different histories and politics—family from Brooklyn, former co-op members, island refugees, and others seeking sanctuary. What interested you about exploring cooperation and conflict under those conditions?
The deep divisions in our society, and the emphasis on identity politics, have convinced people that we can only communicate with those who agree with us. We've become unable, unwilling, to reach out beyond the familiar.
My hope in this novel is that the increasing danger of climate disaster might help people bridge those divisions. In addition, I wonder if once the profit motive is disrupted by external forces, people might forge communities built on cooperation. Perhaps it's our best chance of survival.
Those of us who dwell in towns and cities are disturbingly out of touch with the natural world and what survival demands of us: how do we heat our homes, grow our food, find fresh water.
Much of the novel lingers on adaptation of food, shelter, labor, and care rather than spectacle or collapse. Why was it important to ground the story in the ordinary work of survival?
I understand why so many climate novels focus on the details of the apocalypse: they are dramatic and terrifying, and lend themselves to page-turning plots. I purposely left the catastrophic details in the background in favor of the resulting human emotions and the desire to rebuild.
A major challenge of writing climate fiction is balancing both science and story, and despair and hope. The climate emergency is real, but if our stories focus too much on the science, they can be very grim. If we soft-pedal reality in pursuit of a storybook ending, it feels dishonest.
So grounding this novel in the work of survival—honoring the memories of those lost and learning or relearning the skills necessary to move forward—felt like the most honest and hopeful route I could take.
From burning shtetls to rising seas, one family’s journey spans generations and the fight for survival.
On a remote Maine island, a new community rises—tightly knit, off-grid, and resilient in a changing world.
After Cossacks burn their home, ten-year-old Deborah and her father flee their shtetl to a remote island on Maine's Penobscot Bay, seeking refuge and a new beginning. More than a century later, their descendants are once again uprooted, this time driven by rising seas and a collapsing world. From coastal towns to higher ground, a new community emerges: off-grid, tightly knit, and forged from an unlikely alliance of island refugees, family from Brooklyn, friends from a fractured Massachusetts co-op, and others seeking sanctuary as the political landscape grows increasingly volatile.
