Phoebe Calma

Stoneshore: Life on Vashon Island 1924-1932 Phoebe Calma

A collection of sixteen autobiographical short stories set in the coastal landscape of the Pacific Northwest during the Depression. Phoebe Calma, then Phoebe Bashore, was seven years old when her father announced they would be moving to Vashon Island, 4 miles out by ferry from the city of Seattle. Few others lived on the Island, making up a community of misfits, hermits, and Japanese farmers. The children of three families formed a gang, building cars and fires, and playing poker with matchsticks. Eighty-nine years later, Phoebe Calma is a unique voice, giving light to an old way of life in the poignant way in which only a long life of experience can. A childhood of freedom, filled with vivid discoveries and harsh realities, that one would find in classic American literature.