Turtle Summer: A Journal for my Daughter Review

Turtle Summer: A Journal for my Daughter
by Mary Alice Munroe; photographs and illustrations by Barbara J. Bergwerf

Once upon a Florida summer, I got to see a sea turtle nest as the last little hatchlings were scurrying toward the water. My midnight stroll on a beach got me there just in time to see the last straggler hit the surf and vanish into the black waters. I spent the rest of the weekend exploring the shoreline, noting the nests cordoned off by wildlife officials, who posted signs with the dates and species and the usual warnings.

Reading bestselling novelist Monroe's personal account of her "turtle summer" in South Carolina with her school-age daughter brought back the wonder and giddiness I felt even as an adult. She gives us one nest's chronology, laid out to resemble a scrapbook, but with Monroe's descriptive prose and tender touch.

Bergwerf is no stranger to loggerhead turtles, the featured species, but her photography is better showcased here, with sharp close-ups of all kinds of sea critters and shore birds, but her snapshots of mother and daughter tending the nest are still artless and perfunctory. She also created charcoal sketches of local flora on flecked paper that adds a rustic touch and deepens our understanding of the area.

It's still a lovely composition, matching facts and fancy, science and story, that's well worth a vicarious visit to the idyllic isle off South Carolina, where a mother and daughter patrol the beach in the pre-dawn hours searching for loggerhead nests.