Alternating the personal with the historical, Svenson begins with a frustrating search for the perfect home for his wife and himself; eventually, they discover a rambling house on the bluff of the Eastern Shore. It overlooks the Bay with a view of the shipping lanes, and extending west to Annapolis and Baltimore.

The ships lure him to hitch a ride on a Coast Guard cutter that repairs the buoys. Svenson chronicles the lore, history, and details of maintaining these rocking sentinels. Other chapters are devoted to wind patterns, the flotsam that washes up on his beach, the arcane art of canoe sailing, how not to build a garage, the history of a defunct amusement park near his home, the gangs of dogs and cats along the shore, the travails of being a landscape painter whose work is rejected by his own community, and an evocative tale of crewing on one of the tugs that push and pull the huge coal barges up and down the long bay. And finally, an epitaph on the eroding ecology of the Chesapeake and environs as run-off pollution, tourism, and overuse threaten to make this area a new Dead Sea.

Svenson is a poet of the details of life. His evocations make unpromising topics fascinating, as if seen for the first time -- the sweep of these details builds to create a brilliant word picture of a place in time. Even if you've never been to the Chesapeake, after reading Green Shingles you will know it like the palm of your hand.