Sometimes an Island
Sea Crow Press
Publication date: March 3, 2026
Paperback $19.95
Readers of Ellen Meeropol’s novels will find echoes of her characters from earlier works in “Sometimes an Island.” It is a pleasure to encounter them again. I’ve been reading Meeropol’s books for years and was eager to have an advance copy of this, her most recent one, published by Sea Crow Press, release date, March 3, 2026.
Early reviewers have said the book is “masterfully crafted.” While the events in this novel of linked stories are rooted in history, reviewers note they also present a “chilling” view of our world today “and our precarious place in it.”
The book begins by telling the origin story of the characters who come to this “precarious place.” More than a century earlier a central family we follow, the Sapersteins, must flee for their lives after attacks by the Cossacks during the pogroms against the Jews in the Pale of Settlement. Surviving the terror, they and their descendants will come to thrive on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. Thrive they will until rising seas impel them to leave, becoming refugees once again. In time they are joined farther inland in Maine by a cousin from western Massachusetts and members of her co-op. Descriptions of this “Homestead,” as it comes to be called, may seem familiar to some Berkshires readers. At one point in the novel, it is described as the heartfelt center of the community, a location Meeropol says is based on Paige’s Place, a farm-to-table restaurant in Otis.
There, in time, they will encounter the “Great Undoing,” the climate catastrophe of 2029. But before this event, chapters toggle among earlier years. We meet characters living as we live today, cell phones, computers, etc., with their everyday concerns, before they take action to seek higher ground.
The date, a mere three years from today, gives one pause. Many of the vivid descriptions in the book could be, if writ large, pulled from recent reports of weather-related (read climate-related) disasters. One of the book’s narrators makes reference to the dangers posed by a Greenland glacier melt (which did occur in 2020) as evidence that they were given fair warning, that those living on islands, would face increasing danger of rising seas. At a critical point, the payment comes due. One of the main characters and a descendent of the first family fleeing the Cossacks ponders more than a century later, given this latest catastrophe, how they might do better this time to make the world safer, especially for the surviving children.
Meeropol makes the idea of future “climate refugees” a reality through her characters. Their lives, loves, and joy-filled moments amid breathtaking challenges and tragedy will make even the most hardened reader reach for a tissue. And this is a book of many characters. (A chart at the beginning, of primary families and their descendants, serves as a handy guide.) It will take a closely knit community to survive the calamity faced in these pages. It is this small band of survivors committed to begin again who give this book its soul. Amid the turmoil there is also humor and love and hope.
It will take a new breed of giants in the earth to endure and perhaps to prosper in the aftermath of the book’s Undoing. You have to read the book to learn how that plays out. I encourage you to do just that.
Editor’s note:
Ellen Meeropol will discuss her book at the following Berkshire events:
Wednesday, May 27, at 11:10 am in conversation with Joe Donahue on WAMC
Wednesday, June 17, in conversation with Jean Moore at The Bookstore in Lenox
Saturday, July 18 with artist and author Gail Gelburd in conversation with Hilde Weisert at the Sandisfield Arts Center
More events are available at http://www.ellenmeeropol.com
