25 years and counting on kent island

“There is no way on Earth that I would ever live on Kent Island.”

That’s what I once said to my mother. But 25 years ago this week, I finished loading the rental truck, told my dog Daisy to hop in, and drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to meet my wife and daughter at our new home on Kent Island, Maryland. Along the way, I turned on the radio and listened to John Elway and the Denver Broncos beat Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII.

My mother and stepfather had moved to Kent Island late in the summer of 1984, as I was about to start my freshman year at the University of Maryland, College Park. My mom asked if I wanted to save money and stay with them instead of living near campus. An hour’s drive from school, Kent Island was, at the time, mostly farms and woods, with a few housing developments here and there, and more liquor stores than supermarkets. No movie theatres, no bookshops, no malls: absolutely nothing to interest 17-year-old me.

Over my college years and several times thereafter, I visited my folks, and each time confirmed my belief that Kent Island existed at the end of the known universe. Oh, sure, the water was pretty, but the summer traffic was horrible, and there was nothing for a young man to do there except swim and watch time crawl until I drove back to the excitement of the DC area.

But I grew older, with a wife and a daughter soon to enter kindergarten. The condo that we had bought ten years before had been great for a pair of childless twenty-somethings who liked to throw wild parties and hold marathon D&D sessions, but it no longer would do. Construction and congestion in the area had increased, crime had gone up dramatically, and the schools nearby were hot garbage.

Out of the blue one day, my mother called me and said, “You should move to Kent Island. The houses are cheap, and the schools are excellent.” So, we did, renting a house at first (and having another daughter), then buying our current home in 2001.

“The Shire”

Kent Island is the largest island in the Chesapeake Bay, roughly 30 square miles, with about 20,000 residents. It consists of the towns Stevensville and Chester, and the areas around them. There are fewer farms and woods, and more houses and stores than in 1984, but it very much remains a semi-rural place. Housing isn’t cheap anymore, but the schools are still good: both my daughters went through them, going on to great colleges. 

Kent Island is a quiet place with a small-town feel to it. People know their neighbors, and wave to them as they walk or drive by. Odds are pretty good that if you go to any of the stores, or out to eat, or just to run any sort of errand, you’ll bump into someone you know.

Many people on Kent Island like to boat, to fish and crab, to hunt, or to play golf. A lot of them root for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens, and the Washington Capitals. While some of the exchanges on Facebook community pages can get ugly (as they do everywhere that people feel free to talk smack behind a keyboard), Kent Islanders generally like each other and look our for one another, as they did after Hurricane Isabel in 2003, or the tornado that destroyed several homes in 2017.

They also help out by volunteering at churches, food banks and homeless shelters; by belonging to the VFW, Moose, Elks, or Knights of Columbus; by running scout troops; or by coaching youth sports teams.

Restaurants are plentiful and varied: seafood (to be expected) and fast food, as well as chains like Cracker Barrel. But also locally-owned ethnic places: Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, and El Salvadoran (I’m waiting for that Japanese steakhouse to open). There are breweries and distilleries, but still no movie theatres.

There are walking trails, nature preserves, and dog parks. There are antique shops, arts, a public library, and historical sites. There are parades and festivals, and fireworks on the 4^th of July. The Buccaneers of Kent Island High School maintain a fierce football rivalry with the Lions of Queen Anne’s County High School, a 20-minute drive away.  

It’s not perfect, of course. Overdevelopment and the continued influx of new people are big issues: everyone who moves here wants to shut down the bridges and keep out newcomers just as soon as their house finishes getting built.

Meanwhile, natives whose families have been here since colonial times view everyone from somewhere else as “transplants,” no matter how long they’ve lived here. My wife and children and I could spend the rest of our days in our neighborhood, and we’d still be “chicken-neckers” from the “Western Shore.”

There is crime, but it is very infrequent, mostly of the petty theft sort: people taking power tools from a garage, or a purse from an unlocked car. Typically, the most violence one hears about is late-night rowdiness at one of the bars on the water. 

Aside from sports, there’s still not a lot for young people to do. I often told my kids, “Kent Island is a great place to grow up…and move away from.” My wife and I encouraged them to go to college out of state, to study abroad, to travel whenever and wherever possible, and to have adventures out in the great, wide world.

Which they did. Following school, my older daughter came back to Maryland, and lives about an hour and a half away, near the ocean. I don’t imagine she’ll stay there forever. My younger daughter loves living in Southern California as she finishes her degree, and she might never come back.

All in all, Kent Island is very much like The Shire from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. It’s a small, serene place, seemingly far-removed from the outside world, where people are ordinary, and nothing much happens.

Kent Island Gets Lit

As I was formulating ideas for what would become Lost Dogs, my second published novel, it occurred to me that if Stephen King could set much of his work in his native Maine, then I could place my post-apocalypse book on Kent Island. I wouldn’t have to do any research, and I could keep the scale very small. Most end-of-the-world stories encompass a lot of territory: King’s The Stand goes from one coast of the U.S. to the other. By keeping Lost Dogs on Kent Island, I could make my book more distinctive.

A lot of the book takes place in my neighborhood of Bay City, and it was fun to use landmarks like Bay Bridge Airport, the Batt’s Neck dump, and (especially) Food Lion supermarket. Whenever I sell a copy of Lost Dogs to locals, I tell them that they’ll never go into that grocery store again without picturing Buddy, Sally, Jake, Rex, and the others running up and down the aisles.

Stray Cats, my latest novel, takes place across nine different worlds, but because it’s a follow-up to Lost Dogs, part of it is set on Kent Island—well, two different versions of Kent Island, that is.

One version is the post-apocalyptic milieu of the previous book, where people have vanished and pets struggle to survive. The other version is our real-life Kent Island, where a retiree rattles around his newly-purchased home in the Four Seasons development, with no one for company but his cat Pimmi and his dog Seamus. 

In between Lost Dogs and Stray Cats, I published This Wasted Land, and again, I used Kent Island. It’s about a troubled teenage girl, Alyx, newly arrived in the area and to the high school, who eventually develops a relationship with a local boy, Sam. When a witch abducts Sam, Alyx follows to get him back. Again, it was fun to include Kent Island locations, as well as references to actual people.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that several other authors have written works on or about Kent Island. I especially recommend those from my pal Brent Lewis, author of the non-fiction books Remembering Kent Island, and Stardust By the Bushel: Hollywood on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore. He also wrote the excellent crime novel Bloody Point 1976.

Here Today and Tomorrow, But Then…?

The college-aged version of me from 1984 despised Kent Island; the middle-aged me almost 40 years later loves it. I’ve been here almost half my life, and it’s seeped into my bones. I wouldn’t live anywhere else in Maryland but here.

I have no plans to leave any time soon, certainly not before I retire from the day job. My mom is still here, as are many of my wife’s siblings and their families. A lot of our neighbors are our friends, and we hang out together. We’re especially close with the Becker’s across the street: our kids and theirs are about the same age, and were like sisters and brothers to each other. The boys are the sons I never had.

I love our house. It’s small and cozy, and the wood stove keeps it warm in the winter. Our children grew up here, and over a dozen pets shared their lives with us in this place. The sapling that my older daughter brought home for Arbor Day in 2003 is a pine taller than the telephone lines that run through its branches.

Nevertheless, I could see myself leaving when I’m old. Maryland has high taxes, and the winters on Kent Island are often a horrible combination of rainy and chilly, cold enough to be miserable, but not cold enough to snow.

Maybe my wife and I will relocate to one of the Gulf states, or maybe out west: Montana is beautiful and has proper winters. Maybe we’ll move abroad, to Chile or Portugal, Italy or Iceland or Santorini.

The thought that perhaps ten years from now, I might be somewhere else only makes me appreciate this little place even more. Over the decades, it’s changed and I’ve changed, too, and that will continue. For now, Kent Island is where I want to be. It’s home.     

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Kenton Kilgore writes killer SF/F for young adults and adults who are still young. Follow Kenton on Facebook for frequent posts on sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. You can also catch him on Instagram.