The Island of Saint Matthews

When Kevin Jerome Everson’s inquiry about family photos reveals a lost history, he travels to meet the inhabitants of Westport—a small town just to the west of Columbus, Mississippi—to uncover how his familial record vanished. In this personal investigation of records lost to time and circumstance, Everson convenes with the Wesportians about the great flood of the Tombigbee River in 1973, when some people lost everything. An act of recovery and discovery, Emerson finds a piece of his own history in his pursuit of what was lost.