Susan Dowell: A Tale of Smith Island

The food and charming folkways of remote Smith Island, a four-century-old waterman’s community in the Chesapeake Bay, is documented in Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook. The book’s co-author, Club member Susan Stiles Dowell, was a reporter for MD Public Television when the frozen bay isolated Smith Island in the 1970s. The following spring, Susan produced a film feature about the island, and soon after she created the regional cookbook. Alarmingly, Smith Island is in danger of disappearing completely within the next half century due to tidal erosion and the rising sea level.