Duck is the last boom town on the Outer Banks. In just a few decades, it has been transformed into a place where there are a thousand summer tourists for every native, where absentee landlords own far more property than do year-round residents. Part personal essay, part oral history, Duck: An Outer Banks Village is the lyrically told story of an unforgettable place. Built on a spit of shifting sand barely a half-mile wide, highly subject to the wind and the sea, the village has always placed unusual demands on those who would live here. Duck old-timers had to be hunters, fishermen, farmers, and "wreckers"—all at the same time. Author Judith D. Mercier captures both the village's glory days—when shooting six hundred ducks constituted merely an average day for a market hunter—and its forgotten moments—like one man's heroic attempt to create an African-American beach resort during the Jim Crow years. What emerges is a portrait of a community—or, in the words of the locals, a neighborhood—seeking to preserve its past as it tackles the future.