Commissioned to write a book on the North Sea coastline from Denmark to Germany, Dorthe Nors has written a book that is as much about the people who live there and their relationship to the coast, as it is about the line where sea touches sand. Each chapter of this poetic book explores a different section of coastline as she recounts her memories of it and the way it has changed. Storms, erosion, shifting islands, breakwaters, and dams: the North Sea’s primary characteristics are its unpredictability and even its violence, but humans will insist on living next to the sea and doing work to bend it to their will, usually without success. Nors describes a manor house that disappears, cemeteries that tumble into the sea, and islands that lure walkers to their deaths. At the same time, she has an incredible gift for exploring the cultural differences of the inhabitants of the coastline—Frisians, Jutlanders, Germans, etc.—and how they have contested the line. “The people I meet have traumas, inherited as well as current,” she writes. “They know loss, and they know that everything that is won can be forfeited again. If it isn’t the storm surges it‘s time: all this is only borrowed unless you fight for it” (209). Such a thought-provoking book!