A Tale of Water by Sandra Marshburn

A Tale of Water contains twenty poems that were written with life on Edisto Island, South Carolina, in mind. The author, originally a Midwesterner who grew up near Lake Michigan, already liked water before she moved to Edisto, but salt water, hurricanes, creeks, wading birds, maritime forests, and the importance of bridges to life on an island serve as new material for her.

Edisto Island offers more than incredible scenery to think and write about: serious challenges to its shorelines from climate change, and a group of islanders, some native, some like her, a transplant, all of them working together to keep the island a natural part of the coast, with limitations on commercial development.

The author began volunteering soon after she arrived on Edisto at the Edisto Island Museum writing materials for annual tours of historical places on Edisto became a quick way for her to learn the history of a place and people who have not been focused on much before.

These elements enrich her life and her writing, with many poems connecting Edisto to a larger sense of time and place and to the past.