Gary Richman’s staple-bound book takes place around the Paerdegat Basin, a channel off of East Brooklyn. Using an uncovered ostracon (a scrap of stone with writing scratched into it) as a temporal switch point, Richman’s text oscillates between present day Brooklyn and times before European settler colonists entered the Americas. Richman uses words to play with time and space, situating Indigenous people who may have made the ostracon and the young boy who found it in conversation with each other, united in their spatial occupancies. Every other page is text, and in between are illustrations and photographs—some abstract, some representational—that combine to create chaotic intermissions between the pages that contain only words.

The Paerdegat Ostracon’s cover is deep red, with a slightly embossed title and illustration of the ostracon itself. The book was published by Blue Book Issues in an edition of 100 copies that, as per the wishes of Richman, will not be reprinted within the artist’s lifetime.