Tanaki on the Shore

Fiction. TANAKI ON THE SHORE is a novel by Bill Smith. Biologist David Tanaki arrives at a research station on Maryland's Eastern Shore to study the movement and navigation of species in the Chesapeake. Taken up by the Yamaguchi sisters, who run their family's fishing fleet, he is enticed into the culture of his ancestors. Haunted by a lover and colleague whose intuitive methods sprung out of the very mysteries of animal instincts, Tanaki's own meticulous research casts him into a net of political intrigue. ON THE SHORE is about the bridges between insight and action, the past and the present, as Tanaki navigates between two women, an environmental lawyer, and a Native American activist, who are among his allies in the struggle against a corporate plan to develop and destroy the wetlands. Through this conflict he confronts the migration of his family to America and the nature of his own identity.