Description
Book SynopsisWhile scouting sites for geology field trips, John Lane encountered gullies created between the Civil War and the 1930s contributed to by his mother’s tenant farming family. This brush with the poor farming practices of the past leads Lane into an exploration of his family’s complicated history and of the larger forces that have shaped the region.
Trade ReviewIn his extraordinary book,
Gullies of My People, John Lane—poet and naturalist—tells us: there is wonder in both discovering who you are and how you got there. This work is just that, an enlightening journey over and through the physical land an extended family traversed as well as the personal journey of one man with particular attention to the mother who raised him— his bedrock, despite the many hardships and losses along the way. The metaphorical connections are powerful and produce a compelling and resonant family portrait." - Jill McCorkle, author of
Hieroglyphics"
Gullies of My People is a lyrical work of ‘geo-autobiography’ that simultaneously, or rather in a pattern of layered stratigraphy, explores the author’s home place in the Piedmont region of South Carolina and his family history. Back and forth, back and forth, the narrative progresses from depictions of the land, particularly the overgrown and neglected—but deeply storied—gullies of the region, to ever deepening depictions of key members of Lane's family." - Scott Slovic, author of
Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development: Toward a Politicized Ecocriticism"John Lane brilliantly uses the Piedmont South’s erosive past to cut through and make visible the accreted layers of his own family history. Gullies of My People is the kind of peopled nature writing this wounded region needs.” - Paul S. Sutter, author of
Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South
