Fifteen years later, he returned to write his book.
Swift spent more than a year living on the island starting in 2015, trying to get know the place and its people. As he wrote:
"It is a community unlike any in America. Here live people so isolated for so long that they have their own style of speech, a singsong brogue of old words and phrases, twisted vowels, odd rhythms. Its virtually amphibious men follow a calendar set by the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and they catch more of the prized delicacy than anyone else. It is a near-theocracy of old-school Christians who brook no trade in alcohol, and kept a major movie from filming in their midst over scenes of sex and beer. And not least, this is one big extended family: All but a few islanders can trace their lineage to a single man."