The tenth island

Diana Marcum is a reporter whose career has stalled while an old private grief closes in on her. Then she comes across an unusual group of immigrants living in rural California, and she follows them on their yearly trip back to the Azores, a remote chain of islands in the Atlantic.

On those islands bulls run through village streets and volcanoes are still active. The villagers hold festas to ease saudade, a longing so deep that the Portuguese word for it resists full translation.

Years later, California is in a bad drought and the wildfires keep coming. Diana still dreams of the islands, and of the chuva, a rain so soft that nobody notices when it starts or stops.

She decides to go back, bringing Murphy, her troublesome Labrador retriever. The book is a memoir told by Diana herself, built around reporting and travel, and it moves between California and the islands.

Diana expects to find the place she remembers. She discovers instead that she still longs for things, and one of them may be a love she did not expect.