Elizabeth Graver's Blog - Posts Tagged "cape-cod"
Boys, Beetles, Birds...Give Them an Island, and They'll Grow
The Lost Boys of Penikese Island
It feels like a place out of a dream, this little green-and-gold island with its swooping birds and mounds of grass. It might be far away—in the Scottish Hebrides, perhaps—or out of a children’s adventure story where barefoot boys roam free. But Penikese Island sits in Buzzards Bay, 12 miles from Woods Hole.
My husband grew up on Buzzards Bay and knew this 75-acre island as a therapeutic boarding school for troubled teens. For six months of the year, boys came to grow their own food, tend the animals, chop firewood, and go to class.
The first time I visited, over a decade ago, we beached our motor boat, climbed ashore, and were greeted almost instantly by a suntanned, tousled teenager. We returned at least once a summer, and were often the only visitors, though occasionally we’d run into a scientist who’d come to observe the roseate terns or American burying beetles—both endangered species making a comeback on the island. On a mid-October day a few years back, we took the boat out past seals gathering on Gull Island and arrived on Penikese. There, we played touch football with the boys, the sumac turning red, the waves the iron gray of fall.
In 2011 the school suspended operations. Since then, the island has felt ghostly without the boys’ presence. Now the school is scheduled to reopen with a new focus: helping teenagers recover from substance abuse. Meanwhile, the tern population is thriving. The American burying beetle is going strong.
Birds, beetles, boys. Give them an island, and they’ll grow.
—Elizabeth Graver’s fourth novel, The End of the Point, came out this spring.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-en...
It feels like a place out of a dream, this little green-and-gold island with its swooping birds and mounds of grass. It might be far away—in the Scottish Hebrides, perhaps—or out of a children’s adventure story where barefoot boys roam free. But Penikese Island sits in Buzzards Bay, 12 miles from Woods Hole.
My husband grew up on Buzzards Bay and knew this 75-acre island as a therapeutic boarding school for troubled teens. For six months of the year, boys came to grow their own food, tend the animals, chop firewood, and go to class.
The first time I visited, over a decade ago, we beached our motor boat, climbed ashore, and were greeted almost instantly by a suntanned, tousled teenager. We returned at least once a summer, and were often the only visitors, though occasionally we’d run into a scientist who’d come to observe the roseate terns or American burying beetles—both endangered species making a comeback on the island. On a mid-October day a few years back, we took the boat out past seals gathering on Gull Island and arrived on Penikese. There, we played touch football with the boys, the sumac turning red, the waves the iron gray of fall.
In 2011 the school suspended operations. Since then, the island has felt ghostly without the boys’ presence. Now the school is scheduled to reopen with a new focus: helping teenagers recover from substance abuse. Meanwhile, the tern population is thriving. The American burying beetle is going strong.
Birds, beetles, boys. Give them an island, and they’ll grow.
—Elizabeth Graver’s fourth novel, The End of the Point, came out this spring.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-en...
Goodreads Giveaway, The End of the Point!
Paperback pub date for The End of the Point is April 24. Enter here to win a free copy!
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Goodreads Giveaway: The End of the Point
Paperback publication date of The End of the Point is April 22nd! Enter here to win a free copy!
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Elizabeth Graver
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Elizabeth Graver
