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Sometimes an Island
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.
Sometimes gritty, sometimes magical, and always deeply human, Sometimes an Island asks a vital question: How do we navigate an uncertain future armed only with our memories, our hopes, and the bonds that hold us together?
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"With acute vision and deep soulfulness, Ellen Meeropol imagines the fate of our fragile planet. In this powerful, prismatic novel-in-stories, she weaves a layered portrait of humanity's capacity for love—and for destruction." —Debra Jo Immergut, author of You Again
"Told in a cascade of Greek chorus-like voices, Sometimes an Island is a chilling story of the world we live in and our precarious place in it." —Ann Hood, author of The Stolen Child
"Sometimes an Island captures the peacefulness offered by the secluded island life of Penobscot Bay in Maine, while juxtaposing that simplicity with the many family tensions that define us all. Ellen Meeropol writes in a precise prose that imbues her characters and the locations in which they live with a beautiful clarity that rings true. As a resident of Vinalhaven Island, I found Sometimes an Island to be both authentic and a true pleasure to read." —Caleb Mason, author of Thickafog
In Sometimes an Island, Ellen Meeropol weaves a miraculous story of love, loss, and resistance—braiding past and future in a haunting portrait of a family's multi-generational struggle on their coastal Maine island. As the climate crisis ravages the world in 2029, this saga of intentional communities transforms into an urgent warning and a radiant wonder. With precision and emotional depth, Meeropol illustrates how our connections to each other become our most vital resource against encroaching devastation. A masterfully crafted story that celebrates the fierce, fragile resilience of the human spirit when everything familiar threatens to wash away.—Randy Susan Meyers, international bestselling author of The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone
"Gorgeously written, this novel-in-stories brings the world—past and future—so alive you can taste, feel and see it. Sometimes An Island asks the question: can our stories save us? A family that once fled pogroms finds the answer as they grapple with impending disaster. Highly recommended." —Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder
