For nearly a century and a half, Hart Island has been the final destination for New York’s destitute and departed. I first heard of Hart Island while reading Tim Page’s marvelous biography of Dawn Powell. I was fascinated that someone who had some notoriety could still end up in a potter’s field (which I never knew was a biblical reference—land bought using Judas’ blood money to bury the poor once belonged to a potter). Unfortunately, my image of the island remains gauzy even after reading this book. This is not entirely the author’s fault. For most of it’s history, the island has been under the control of either the military or the New York prison system—neither organization has been eager to share information. Even visiting the island was virtually impossible until more recent times—and those visits mostly limited to families of the deceased residing there. The book jumps around in a seemingly random manner which doesn’t help—making the book feel like a series of articles strung together. To compensate for a lack of in-depth information about the island, the book is full of the history of New York—the famous, the infamous, the indigent and the dead. Some of it is fascinating (so much of New York’s expensive real estate sits upon old cemeteries) some of it less so. Apparently over a million have been buried there but throughout the book confusing references are made to other numbers or to simply not knowing a number at all. This also contributes to that feeling of articles strung together. Maybe it’s my natural empathy, but reading this did make me feel the weight of the island. Layer upon layer of stories does partly impress the magnitude of the lives erased from memory upon the reader but that weight alone does not tell the whole story. I wish I knew more.