The Tenth Island

Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores

By: Diana Marcum

Narrated by: Rebecca Mozo

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2018 Diana Marcum (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Mozo's performance breathes life into the real-life people in this audiobook.... Marcum's words and Mozo's performance are a lovely combination, which is sure to help listeners escape to a more tranquil place - at least in their minds." (AudioFile)

Fun Memoir-Travelogue

My rating scale: 1-Not for me/2-It's okay/3-Pretty good/4-It's great/5-I love it!

Basically, this is a memoir - but if you have some wanderlust, warning - you might find yourself interested in the Azores! The lesson to learn from this book is that while the TV travel shows are fun to watch, the best way to truly learn about a new place is to stay for a while, make friends, live like a native, and visit more than once. Worth a listen!

Delightful

A wonderful palate cleanser, well-written and interesting
Well read
Sweet without being cloying
More please

Amazing Get Away from it Book

The Tenth Island is beautifully written and exceptionally performed. It takes you on a voyage of sights, tastes and feelings.

very visual book

The book brought the islands alive in the most delightful ways. I was a great listen.

Sounds like home!

The Central Valley is my home. I recognized almost all of the valley cities mentioned.

Good Human Interest Piece

Diana Marcum's look at the Azores is engaging. The exploration of the connection between immigrants and their mother land is fascinating and grabs the reader. Her character portraits are well done and we get a sense of true love of the Azores from her and those she writes about. She did have a lot of characters and it sometimes got hard to keep them straight (Marcum usually writes human interest features for the LA Times so adding more humans to be interested in likely contributed to this). Rebecca Mozo is a talented voice artist and I enjoyed her narration for the most part. She changed how she pronounced Azores a few times and there were some extra long pauses that threw off the flow, but her tone and grasp of Portuguese musical pronunciations made up for it.

Entrancing, romantic, educational and entertaining

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist has a chance encounter with a little known ethnic group which leads her to discover the Azores: a small group of islands literally in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Author Diana Marcum’s journalistic expertise and research inform this delightful book: memoir, travelogue, immersion in Portuguese and Azorian history, romance, confessional, and thoughtful essay on a remote and beautiful land with timeless and relevant lessons in traditions and sustainability.

Fascinating story about Azores and Azores diaspora

This is a very personal story by a journalist who knows how to write an excellent text about others and about her own experiences. It covers strong connections between the Azorean people who have emigrated to California and other places in North America with the Azores islands and culture. The descriptions of life in the small communities on the island are warm and very interesting. I listened to this almost without stopping.

The Texas the Island

This was my first time using Auto book and it took some time to get use to it. The story was a little slow for me.

Great depiction of the Azorean customs

I too am one of the summer regulars to the islands. Spot on storytelling about my people, customs and the land of "Saudade".
I wasn't to fond of the narrator. Some of the Portuguese words were not pronounced correctly, and she was using a Brazilian accent.