Author borrows the ghost of Tom Never to narrate its history
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
As the vice president of the Tom Nevers Civic Association, Jack Warner entertained a meeting five years ago about increasing its membership. "I asked if anyone ever wrote a history of the [Tom Nevers] area, and the answer was not in a long time ... so I thought that was crazy," said the author of the newly released "Tom Never's Ghost."

Island artist and engraver John Lochtefeld created the book's cover image.

(This Jack Warner it should be noted, is not the Nantucket author of the same name who penned "Reflections in the Rear View Mirror.")

After that meeting, Warner, a retired ad executive, returned home and saw his wife's collection of over 100 out-of-print Nantucketthemed books as a beginning. He began to think about the history of Tom Nevers, and decided to write a book himself, using Nantucket's southeast quarter as its starting point.

In addition to using his collection of books at home, Warner said, "I spent the better part of two years at the NHA library and at the Atheneum looking at their microfilm documents, and I spent an untold amount of time at the registry of deeds, tracing land records."

His research lasted for over four years and focused on the island's culture from 1630 to 2005.

"Once you start digging into [Nantucket's history], you can't stop," said Warner, who holds a certificate in Historic Preservation Studies.

In his research, Warner attempted to enumerate not the "what" of the island's history but the "why."

"The litany of Nantucket history that we all learned these many years was not exactly right," he alleged. "Things happened according to the popularized telling, but there's more to it all ...I came up with observations ... like when you watch the talking heads on TV, there are news people and then there are commentary people who try to explain. That's what I did; I tried to explain."

He reinterpreted, for example, the reason that Nantucket's Native Americans burned off vegetation - generally explained as an aid in planting.

"Then I learned that the Indians were mainly into birds, shellfish and fish. So I thought, 'Why would you burn off all this land? Maybe it has something to do with birding, so the birds can eat the little vermin and they could shoot them better." When Warner called the requisite authorities, he said, they agreed that his solution was highly plausible, even exciting. "Lots of little things like that were great fun," he said.

Warner used that same level of analysis to create alternate explanations for the causes of the current "real estate feeding frenzy" and of the end of whaling on island. "A lot of people give you convenient reasons, like the Great Fire, or the sandbar, or the discovery of petroleum, but there's a new telling of the story," Warner said. "There's a new reason why tourists came to the island as a new savior of the economy."

He also documented "all the land schemes that went on, up through the 20th century - all of which failed for one reason or another"- as well as the alleged real use of the navy base at Tom Nevers. "It was such a super top-secret base, you had to have clearance just to know what the acronym of its name meant."

Warner's book even intersects with at least one unique incident documented in the recently released "Mayflower," written by veteran historian Nat Philbrick. It is generally believed that, decades before his eponymous war, Chief Sachem King Philip traveled to Nantucket to punish an Anglicized young Indian named John Gibbs for speaking the name of Philip's dead father - a capital offense in the NativeAmerican culture. "My conclusion is that Philip came to Nantucket for a reason other than that but then there was a confrontation," Warner said.

As Warner sat down to write, he realized history is often better told through its inhabitants. "I thought it would be useful to have a literary device, so I had Tom Never tell the story."

The fact that Warner had never written a fictional work before did not faze him. "What you learn in the ad business is that you have to be a quick study: if you have to, you can do anything." The result is "a historical narrative," Warner explained: "It fits somewhere between history and fiction, with a bit of interpretation on my part."

After working for five years to compile this book, Warner said he knew he would make no money on it. "I wrote it mainly as personal pleasure."

If there is a moral to what Warner has learned, he included it on the first page of the first chapter. Drawing from the Indians' original miscalculation in thinking they could keep the British "in check" on the west end of the island, Warner began the book:

It's about land. It's always been about land...Those of us who came to this island did not come by accident. We were drawn here, displacing those who came before us-just as we all will be displaced by those yet to come.

"There's a cautionary tale to those of us who think we can keep Nantucket as it is in our mind," Warner said. "'We have it for a time,' Tom Never says, 'And then new people will come. That's the way it's always been and always will be.' That's a side of the story that a narrator will tell that a historian might not."

"Tom Never's Ghost" is available locally at Nantucket Bookworks, Mitchell's Book Corner and in the Nantucket Historical Association Museum shop. Look for a book talk with Warner at The Atheneum in October.

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