A mosaic novel of exile, resilience, and the fragile beauty of belonging.
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.
"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
