The Tenth Island

Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores

By: Diana Marcum

Narrated by: Rebecca Mozo

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!

A sweet and evocative account of the Azores

This autobiography takes us to the Azores where the author lived for one year, explored the beauty and customs of the islands, and developed true friendships.

Delightful

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

Enjoyed the listen...

And how the author wrote about life in the Azores. I appreciated how she focused on their way of life and her experiences of it. I am glad that she made the story about them and wove herself into it vs making it about her and weaving them into _her_ story.

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.