Broken turtles, their caregivers form bonds to live

REVIEW: OF TIME AND TURTLES: MENDING THE WORLD, SHELL BY SHATTERED SHELL by Sy Montgomery and illustrated by Matt Patterson

There’s something about turtles. Maybe it’s their familiarity. Even if you never kept one as a pet in a cage with a plastic palm tree, you’ve probably spied them in the wild. Maybe it’s their endearing appearance. Fresh from hatching they already look old and imbued with ancient wisdom. 

Author Sy Montgomery explores these at-once common yet mysterious animals and the people who care for them in Of Time and Turtles. Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell.

During the pandemic, Montgomery and a friend – the book’s illustrator Matt Patterson –  volunteered with a turtle rescue group near their New England homes.There they served as turtle ambulance workers, turtle cage cleaners and turtle playmates. They got to know the turtles not just by species and size, but by personality. There’s the “gentlemanly” Fire Chief, an ancient snapping turtle recovering from being smashed by a truck. Percy is a 100-year-old box turtle rescued from a grim cage at a pet store who can nevertheless sprint to prove he’s still in his prime. Pizza Man, a tortoise who developed a respiratory infection while living with a drug dealer, loves sunning himself in the living room.

No less intriguing than the turtles are the people who rescue them. Natasha and Alexxia, who met working at a fashion store and who run the Turtle Rescue League where the author and illustrator volunteer, run the nonprofit in their home. Their basement houses hundreds of turtles, some recuperating and awaiting release, some still incubating eggs awaiting hatching and some settled in for life because their injuries preclude a return to nature.

The author’s and illustrator’s visit to the Turtle Survival Alliance outside Charleston, its precise location kept because of the lucrative illegal international trade in turtles, introduces us to Chris Hagen, the center’s director of animal management. The 47-year-old is covered with more than 50 tattoos, many related to turtles. Like others in conservation, he grew up loving animals. Unlike many, he was a juvenile delinquent, did heavy drugs and spent time in jail. The worst part about jail for him was the lack of interaction with his favorite species. It seems the threat of future turtle deprivation kept him straight. “I need to take care of turtles,” he says.

The author slides in turtle facts on nearly every page. A few faves: Turtles’ hearts can stop beating for long periods without damage. Not all turtles are silent; some can “croak, squeak, belch, whine, and whistle.” Turtles have been here for more than 250 million years, making them as old as the first dinosaurs. Despite hundreds of facts like these, the writing remains conversational and never pedantic.

Woven throughout the book is also meditation on time. The strangeness of its passage during the pandemic. How the slowness of turtles seems to defy it. How our own aging changes our perception of it.  

For Coastal Georgia readers, Of Time and Turtles and Turtles is an especially appropriate read. The Georgia coast is home, or at least a stopover in the case of some sea turtles, to about 20 species of turtles, an astonishing variety. They range from loggerhead sea turtles that nest on our beaches, to sliders sunning on the banks of Savannah’s canals, to gopher tortoises digging burrows across the coastal plain.  Even our salt marshes host turtles, the jewel-like diamondback terrapins that risk their lives crossing busy roads to nest on high ground. 

The coast supports a small army of dedicated turtle lovers, too. Volunteers and wildlife professionals fan out over Georgia beaches looking for and protecting loggerhead sea turtle nesting sites every morning in the summer. Others patrol for gravid marsh terrapins struck by vehicles on Highway 80 to Tybee or the Jekyll Island Causeway. We have the Georgia Sea Turtle Center and the Tybee Island Marine Science Center, both of which work to conserve turtles and educate the public about them.

Of Time and Turtles is the latest of Sy Montgomery’s dozens of natural history books. She’s written 22 children’s books and a previous 13 for adults, including The Soul of an Octopus, a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015.  Of Time and Turtles is the first work of Montgomery’s I’ve read, but I plan to be learning from her about an octopus soon. 

Of Time and Turtles was published in 2023 by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. It’s 287 pages, hardback and lists for $28.99.