The Tenth Island
By Diana Marcum
Little A, New York
Hardcover, 238 pages
www.apub.com
Reporter Diana Marcum (yes, it’s a narrative written book) is going through a personal crisis. Her stalled career and her sad past are taking their toll. It’s when a co-worker drops on her desk a photograph of migrant workers in California that she is motivated to seek out this story.
She visits the farm and finds an amazing story of migrant workers who spend most of the year in California but then go back to the Azores for their annual pilgrimage. Diana decides to follow them back to the remote Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where bulls run down village streets, volcanoes are active and the people celebrate to ease their feelings of sadness.
She developed deep connections to people in the small community on the islands while researching and writing a series of stories for the Los Angeles Times that later earned her a Pulitzer Prize.
It was years later when California was in a terrible drought that Diana’s focus returned to those Azores islands. Throwing caution to the wind, she returns to discover things she still yearned for and an unexpected love.
