Book excerpt: After a week-long family vacation on Topsail Island, McAllister went home and wrote a newspaper column about the place where everyone goes 10 miles per hour under the speed limit. This column brought a deluge of responses from his readers who shared his appreciation for this barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. As if caught in a time warp, Topsail resembles the resorts of decades past. It has the small-town feel of a family beach, a place with few commercial trappings whose devotees return generation after generation. McAllister blends interviews with the people who know the island with stories of early pirates, devastating hurricanes, a 1940s dig in search of a 1630 Spanish galleon's treasure, the U.S. government's secret rocket program, a modern-day sea-turtle preservation project, and a black bear that came to stroll the beach. In this book, McAllister tells the many stories of Topsail with the help of those who love the island best. - Publisher.