Sometimes An Island

by Ellen Meeropol

180 pages, Paperback

Expected publication March 3, 2026

About the author

Ellen Meeropol is the author of six novels: Sometimes an Island (2026), The Lost Women of Azalea Court, (2022), Her Sister's Tattoo (2020), Kinship of Clover (2017), On Hurricane Island (2015), and House Arrest (2011). A former pediatric nurse practitioner, Ellen began seriously writing fiction in her fifties. She holds an MFA from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. Her stories and essays have appeared in Guernica, Bridges, Ms Magazine, Lilith, Writers Chronicle, The Writer, and Necessary Fiction.

Drawing material from her twin passions of medicine and social justice activism, Ellen’s fiction explores characters at the intersection of political turmoil, ethical dilemmas, and family life.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond the jagged, beautiful coast of Penobscot Bay, scattered across the water, like stones thrown from a giant hand, lie hundreds of islands, some vacant, some settled by the sturdy folks of Down East Maine. One island is the home of the descendants of refugees, three cousins who fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe, to find safety in a new country. It is here that Ellen Meeropol sets her sixth book Sometimes an Island. Told in the voices of both present inhabitants and past ones interwoven, comes the love for the rock they call home, the relationships that both bind and separate, and a growing worry regarding the changes happening to the earth’s climate. Instead of being forced by violence to flee their homes to start anew like their ancestors had, the crisis of global warming impels some to leave the island in search of safety on the mainland, living off the grid, preparing for the worst. Some remain on the island, hoping for safety on their home for decades. Ms Meeropol has written a thoughtful, beautiful book, that crosses between generations as well as genres, to present different aspects of a coming disaster. Sometimes an Island delivers the unfolding preparation for a cataclysm, but also offers the deep, almost magical connections that can exist between people, even through time. 📚
*Early reader review. Publication date March 6 2026; Sea Crow Press

[Jean Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the Prologue to Ellen Meeropol’s most recent novel, Sometimes An Island, we are introduced to a poignant historical throughline, from the pogroms against the Jews in the Pale of Settlement to a self-sufficient community on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine more than a century later. From here, descendants of those earlier refugees will find themselves fleering once again, this time forced out by rising seas, settling deep in Maine’s interior, to be joined later by cousins from a co-op in Massachusetts. Each of these families, the Levis, the Sapersteins, and the Isenfelds, have centuries-old stories to tell, all culminating in the climate catastrophe referred to as the Great Undoing. Questions of what has been undone, how it came to be, and if it can be repaired create the tension within these pages. As we learn the family histories, we also develop insights into the descendants and sense in their later-day struggles what lies ahead for them, and perhaps for us. I was fortunate enough to have received an advanced readers copy of Sometimes an Island, described on the cover as “A Mosaic Novel.” This is a book of stories, of the “genetic mosaic” of the families carried inside each of the characters. The cover describes the book as a novel of family ties, climate upheaval, and resilience. It is the resilience the reader holds onto, making this ultimately a novel of great hope.

[Jan Cantler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel follows a small group of Jewish immigrants who flee the pogroms of the Pale of Settlement to build a new life on a remote island off the coast of Maine—a refuge that becomes both sanctuary and source of isolation for generations to come. Told through multiple voices across generations, the story reveals how inherited memories and traumas shape identity, community, and the lives of descendants who never knew the original journey.

As the narrative moves into a near future marked by climate upheaval, the islanders must confront both the historic wounds that brought them there and the new threat of displacement. Ellen writes about the climate crisis with nuance and restraint, avoiding dystopia and offering her own imagining of a community with resilience, interdependence, and hope.

Exploring the complex bonds of family, tradition, and chosen community, the book becomes a moving meditation on what we carry forward—through stories, rituals, and the deep imprint of generational trauma. Ultimately, it’s a powerful tale of healing, continuity, and the enduring possibility of renewal.

[Patricia Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

From 1893 to 2033, from pogroms spewing hatred of Jews to the tsunami that destroys much of their part of the earth, the vivid characters in the myriad stories of Sometimes An Island, weave together their suffering, their lives, their deaths, their memories, their DNA -- in valiant, faithful, and sometimes crazily inventive ways to create their own history, their own ways of surviving, their own community. This book, conservative in pages, revolutionary in scope of vision, brings with it the kinds of profound questions and possible answers we all, in this current era, must be considering—as Tillie says in 2033--“If our small world gets a second chance, who do we want to be?”

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Julie Schlack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the nested Russian dolls that pass through generations of women in this book, "Sometimes an Island" is also colorful and layered, autonomous but interconnected. Spanning over a century, this is a story of family and sisterhood, danger (whether from pogroms or climate change) and resilience, despair and hope. It's a study of interdependence across time and place, sometimes funny and always poignant. Each chapter is a standalone story in its own right, and the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts.