Village of Islands Audiobook By Jim Shepard cover art

Village of Islands

A Short Story

 Preview

$0.00 for first 30 days

Try for $0.00
Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.

Village of Islands

By: Jim Shepard
Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $14.95

Buy for $14.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

From the award-winning author of The Book of Aron and Phase Six comes a powerful short story exploring one of the most devastating storms in American history.

The 1935 Labor Day hurricane annihilated between four hundred and six hundred lives in the middle of the Florida Keys, and like all disasters, both exposed long-standing social and economic inequities and reminded us of the bonds that enable us to provide what rescue we can for those we cherish. In this fictional account of the storm, rooted in the record but brought to life with Shepard’s unparalleled command of interpersonal impact, Village of Islands follows a handful of residents of a small beachside town in the moments leading up to, during and after this life-altering event.

©2021 Jim Shepard (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC. Historical Fiction Fiction Tearjerking Short Stories

About the Creator

Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Excellence in Jewish Literature, the Ribalow Prize for Jewish Literature, the PEN/New England Award for Fiction, and the Clark Fiction Prize, and most recently Phase Six, published in May 2021, as well as five story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner, and most recently The World to Come. He’s also won the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, the ALEX Award from the American Library Association, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He’s written a book on movies and politics, The Tunnel at the End of the Light, and edited another, Writers at the Movies. The film And Then I Go, from his screenplay based on his novel Project X, was released in 2017, and The World to Come, based on his short story of the same title, in 2021. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife and three beagles, and teaches at Williams College

About the Performer

Stephen Graybill is an award-winning American voice actor. Most recently he earned the Audie Award in History/Biography for his solo narration of Douglas Brinkley's American Moonshot, a historical retelling of John F. Kennedy's quest to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Outside of narration, Graybill is a professional actor, performing onstage, for television and in films—most notably in HBO's Big Little Lies, NBC's Law & Order: SVU, Lifetime’s The Art of Murder, and Game Shakers on Nickelodeon—in addition to appearing in and voicing numerous award-winning television commercials.

.
Compelling Storytelling • Suspenseful Narrative • Emotional Experience • Detailed Research • Edge-of-seat Suspense
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
Wow!!! what a masterful and emotional experience this audio book is! I would love to hear more from this audio story.

Village of islands

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Overall a very interesting and detailed narrative of what happened during the Labor Day hurricane in 1935. It was a category five with winds over 200 miles an hour. It devastated the keys. By creating characters we could identify with it draws us into the story with more emotion

A short poignant story about a devastating storm

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Everyone should know about this hurricane during the Depression that swept away HUNDREDS of WW II veterans and a whole town in Florida’s Keys. It may have been the most fierce one to hit the mainland.

Heartbreaking. Horrific. Important.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Chilling tale of survival based on one of the strongest storms in Florida history. The dry, matter of fact delivery of the story left room for my imagination and memory of hurricanes- how the storm feels and how it makes me feel- to bring the harrowing details to life. Hurricanes- even relatively weak ones- remind me of the raw power and indifference of Nature.

Powerful lessons to be learned- never forget that tools all have limitations. Trust real evidence and be mindful of technology gaps. Overconfidence in limited tools led to tragic and avoidable loss of life.

I know a few of the locations in the story and will likely do a little digging to see what facts of the event exist. This was a good short listen.

chilling tale- worth a listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
story. Easily visible. Fast pace and good through the whole process. That's good and bad. I met too many people. That kept me from being able to completely make all the connections I wanted...

Nice

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narrator reminds me of 1950 documentary voices. The story of this hurricane can be found in many places, this short story is a small Kodak moment of a few people’s lives and losses. It’s an appetizer for us to seek out more and learn more. Short stories are not meant to be full documentaries. It’s remarkable the intensity our hurricanes used to have and how grateful we should all be that the study of hurricanes and weather in general has matured and ultimately saved probably a million lives by now.

Period piece

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This story is definitely worth knowing even if it is very sad and quite depressing. How many years later and we haven’t really learned anything.

I’m crying

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This was a fictional account of the terrible hurricane that hit the Florida Keys in the 1930s. Since it was short, there wasn’t much time to establish much character development. It was more effective describing the effects and aftermath of the hurricane. I had seen a documentary on the History Channel narrated by the late Edward Herman that is the gold standard of what happened. This would’ve been better off with a real account of what happened.

Fictional Account of Florida’s Hurricane

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
too many characters for such a short story. would have been better to focus on one family.

meh

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is excellently describing a massive movement coming toward the Gulf of Mexico and USA. It is brutal and many perish because of it. There is no where to go. Excellently puts you in the middle of hurricane. Great job!

Perfectly described

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews