Island Features

May 21, 2009

Book Review: Hatteras Island: Keeper of the Outer Banks
.…WITH A CHAPTER TO READ

By IRENE NOLAN

Ray McAllister, a veteran journalist from Richmond, Va., has written one of the year’s most interesting new books for all of us who love Hatteras Island.

“Hatteras Island: Keeper of the Outer Banks” is brand new, just published this spring by John F. Blair, Publisher, of Winston-Salem, N.C.

This book is a look at the island’s history, the contemporary life and issues here, and a brief glimpse of what the future might be.

That’s a lot to cover in one book, but McAllister has pulled it off, managing to weave all the pieces together in a style that is very readable.

I was interviewed by McAllister last summer for the book. I had never met him before nor had I read his previous books on Topsail Island or Wrightsville Beach. During the interview, I was somewhat perplexed by what he was intending this book to be – was it a guide book, a history, a story of life on the island today?

It turns out that the book is a bit of all three.

It’s a guide book of sorts. It doesn’t list every attraction or shop on the island, but reading it will definitely enrich your visit to Hatteras. There are chapters on the island’s seven villages – with some interesting history and descriptions of what the villages are like today.

It’s a history book of sorts. McAllister, apparently an indefatigable researcher, has pulled together previously published information from such sources as books and newspaper and magazine articles into a very good brief history of the island. His chapters cover such topics as the early history of the island, pirates, wars off the shores, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, hurricanes, the U.S. Life-Saving Service and its stations, the establishment of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and the evolution of transportation on the island from driving the sand roads to today’s paved Highway 12. Especially enjoyable is his chapter on David Stick, the foremost historian on the Outer Banks, whom McAllister interviewed in Stick’s Kitty Hawk home.

And McAllister ends with a chapter on “Hatteras Tomorrow,” a look at the changes on the island, today’s issues, and what islanders think about the future.

McAllister spent 33 years as a journalist with the Richmond Times-Dispatch – 14 years as a reporter and 19 as a columnist. He left about a year and a half ago, influenced by the changes that have come to all American newspapers. He still lives in Richmond, where he is editor of Boomer Life magazine and continues to write books.

His first book, published in 1995, is a collection of mostly humor columns entitled "Reflections: Objects in Mirror Appear Backwards, But Maybe It's Me."

In August, 2005, he wrote a column for the Richmond newspaper about another small island in North Carolina, Topsail Island, which got good response from readers. He had visited the island with family, including his daughter and son-in-law who love Topsail and urged him to write a book about it.

“Topsail Island: Mayberry By The Sea" was published in 2006. Another island book, "Wrightsville Beach: The Luminous Island," followed in 2007. Both books were winners of Willie Parker Peace History Book Awards, given annually by the North Carolina Society of Historians, and were nominated for Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

The logical next book was on Hatteras Island, which he first visited in September, 1982, with his wife and infant daughter.

“September on Hatteras Island is a glorious time,” he writes in the preface to his book. “The weather and the water retain summer’s warmth. Prices have dropped from the peak season, and the crowds have dwindled now that school has started – not that the island is ever crowded.”

The family came back for several years in September but ended their fall visits when their daughter reached school-age.

Then McAllister and his wife, Vicki, who took many of the photographs in the book, returned to write about the island.

“I’ve enjoyed doing this so much,” he says about his trips to the island for research and interviews.

McAllister’s background as a journalist is apparent in the care he took in his research and reporting. His reporting of places, names, and events is admirably accurate. It’s hard to find an error, which isn’t always the case when outsiders come here to write about Hatteras.

The author is really perceptive when he writes about the life and lifestyle of today’s islanders – of why we are here, why we stay here or don’t, why we put up with the inconveniences of island life and the storms.

And, finally, I really like the way McAllister describes the book in his preface.

“The book that has emerged here is neither a travel guide nor a history nor a paean to a disappearing lifestyle, though it contains elements of each. It is certainly not the definitive book on Hatteras Island. That book has never been written and never will be. Indeed, anyone who trifles with the history of Hatteras runs the risk of getting it so intertwined with legend, hearsay, and errors of fact as to be unrecognizable….

“This book is, instead, a conversation with an island.

“It is shared memories with a warm beach, recollections of a storm, tales from a violent ocean. It is hot July days and dreary February days and the promising days of early May. It is wind and sunrises and sunsets and blowing sand and churning surf….It is long-dead fishermen and lifesavers peering out from old photographs, and tourists and kite boarders smiling from new ones, and natives and transplants brought together every summer, the latter sometimes charmed by the former and the former simply putting up with the latter until, by God, they leave. All share and celebrate this ever-changing -- ever-challenging – spit of land that nobody should be able to live on. But don’t you dare try to tell them they shouldn’t be here. They would be no place else.”

This is an eloquent or insightful description of what our life is like here and why we stay here.

Whether you have lived here all your life or have come here more recently or are a first-time visitor or a visitor who keeps on coming back, you will enjoy reading this book.

As McAllister says in the final line of his preface:

“Pull up a chair. Have a listen.”

And, with permission from McAllister and the publisher you can read a chapter from the book.

Chapter Eighteen: The Hatteras Life

(“Hatteras Island: Keeper of the Outer Banks.” John F. Blair, Publisher. 297 pages. $19.95 in hardcover and $13.95 in soft cover. Available from local booksellers or the publisher, www.blairpub.com)