The Tenth Island

Diana Marcum
The Tenth Island
(Little A, Hardcover August 2018, Paperback January 2019)

A Washington Post bestseller
An Amazon Charts Most Read book
Listed on The New York Times‘s Holiday Book Suggestions gift guide
Featured on The New York Times’s “52 Books for 52 Places”

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer comes an exuberant memoir of personal loss and longing, and finding connection on the remote Azorean islands of the Atlantic Ocean.

Reporter Diana Marcum is in crisis. A long-buried personal sadness is enfolding her—and her career is stalled—when she stumbles upon an unusual group of immigrants living in rural California. She follows them on their annual return to the remote Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where bulls run down village streets, volcanoes are active, and the people celebrate festas to ease their saudade, a longing so deep that the Portuguese word for it can’t be fully translated.

Years later, California is in a terrible drought, the wildfires seem to never end, and Diana finds herself still dreaming of those islands and the chuva—a rain so soft you don’t notice when it begins or ends.

With her troublesome Labrador retriever, Murphy, in tow, Diana returns to the islands of her dreams only to discover that there are still things she longs for—and one of them may be a most unexpected love.

Praise for THE TENTH ISLAND

“In her engaging travel memoir [Marcum] captures the spirit of saudade with an eye for detail and a playful earnestness…In the remote islands of the Azores, Marcum seems to have found her spot.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“If you need a summer vacation but can’t get out of town, take a trip to the Azores with Diana Marcum. Her travel memoir about her special connection to the islands will make you want to drop everything and hop on the next flight to paradise.”
―HelloGiggles

“Lazy mornings, family intrigue, cantankerous bulls, hope. Diana Marcum found it all on a potato-shaped island in the middle of the Atlantic. And thank goodness she did, for the resulting tale is as inspirational as it is entertaining. Marcum is the perfect travel companion: smart, open-minded, and just the right amount of funny. She’s also endearing, in a Bad News Bears sort of way, and by the end of  The Tenth Island I found myself not only liking her but rooting for her too.”
—Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss

Read The Fussy Librarian‘s interview with Diana Marcum
Read an excerpt of THE TENTH ISLAND
Listen to Diana Marcum’s interview with KVPR
Read Diana Marcum’s interview with PEN America “The Pen Ten with Diana Marcum”
Featured in Audiobooks.com‘s article “6 Audiobooks and Activities for Relaxation Day”
TheCultureTrip.com shares an excerpt of THE TENTH ISLAND
Watch Diana Marcum’s interview on Hora Quente

Diana Marcum is a narrative writer for the Los Angeles Times. In 2015, she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her newspaper portraits of farmers, field-workers, and others in the drought-stricken towns of California’s Central Valley.