Point of View

This collection of stories is told by Charles Whedbee, a native of the Outer Banks area, so the stories have a distinctive feeling of personal familiarity. The narrator does not make it obvious whether the stories are sought-out research, or just local stories repeated many times by the fire. Regardless, he owns the stories, telling them from the viewpoint that they are the stories of his own people. He mingles tongue-in-cheek skepticism with faith in the power of miracles, using both scientific explanations, and tragic ghost stories to explain phenomena, but never poking too hard into the origin of an interesting mystery. It is clear that he highly values the independence, cultural variety, and love of the sea and coastlands that the characters in the stories exhibit.

Generally, the narrator tells his stories from a third-person point of view, knowing only the details which are dramatic...