Island Pracitice by Pam Belluck

First off, this is no work of fiction. The 67-year-old Timothy Lepore is still practising on Nantucket. The book is more analytic and clinical than narrative.

Islands are unique places that foster a strong sense of community as well as privacy and acceptance of individualism. Separation from the mainstream makes dependance on neighbours essential whether or not they like one another. Being surrounded by water and isolated by fog, heavy surf and ocean currents, storms, other natural disasters breeds self-reliance and independence.

Nantucket is one such community. In my native Maritimes I can think of Gran Manan, Tancook Island, the LaHave Islands, Briar Island. Fishing and life aboard sea figure strongly, one of my classmates began and ended each school day rowing a dory to and from shore.

Separated from Cape Cod by thirty miles of ocean Nantucket has been made famous by whaling. Like most island communities the state of the fisheries has forever changed the tenor of life. This book is as much about the history and sociology of the Island as it is about the physician who is described as being integral to its livelihood.