Tidewater Review by Anne Stinson
Deadrise by Robert Blake Whitehill. Telemachus Press. 337 pp. $9.99.
a river with hand tongs, like giant wooden scissors that he can close if and when he feels oysters (or just as often rocks) below. He may not find oysters when he hand-over-hands the heavy tongs out of the water, but he’ll definitely grow admirable biceps. Less primitive, but more
Local writers seem totally unable to ignore the old axioms of every level of writing, from third grade’s “write a story about what you did on summer vacation” to Composition 101 for freshmen in college: “Write what you know about.” Robert Whitehill, a resident of Chestertown, has set this mystery in Smith and Tangier Islands, plus little uninhabited islets in that string of marshy hummocks fighting erosion in the Chesapeake Bay. He knows the isolated places well ~ he’s lived on them off and on. Whitehill is obviously familiar with the livelihood of his fictional character, Ben Blackshaw, who is a waterman like nearly every man who inhabits Smith and Tangier. When the story begins, it’s winter ~ oyster season. For a waterman on the Eastern Shore, that means options for harvesting the catch. He can dredge the shallow bottom of 37