The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country Book

Henry Thoreau seldom wandered far from Walden Pond but got a good book full of self-discovery out of the deal. Like Thoreau, Franklin Burroughs stays close to home ground in The River Home (originally published as Horry and the Waccamaw), an account of a six-day solo canoe trip along the Waccamaw River, a little-known waterway that flows from North to South Carolina, ending in the swampy Horry County of his boyhood. Along the way Burroughs encounters feisty water moccasins, backwoods fishermen, and a sage woodcarver who regales him with tales of the great wet forests being cleared for the development of nearby Myrtle Beach. "Accumulated memory is disappearing with the landscape," Burroughs writes, "and people can no longer assume that, simply by being born in the country, they have its history by heart, and need not think further about it." Burroughs's quest for the idyllic South of youthful recollection is melancholic--the destruction of favorite places is, after all, a constant in most of our lives. His well-earned lesson is that of fellow Carolinian Thomas Wolfe: You truly can't go home again. --Greg McNameeRead More

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  • Product Description

    The American river has a rich literary heritage, extending from Twain and Thoreau to the more recent journeys of John Graves and Jonathan Raban. Following in this great tradition, Franklin Burroughs chronicles a canoe voyage through the Carolinas, visiting his ancestral homeland and the people who inhabit the banks of the Waccamaw River. His account of this distinctive and rapidly disintegrating backwater reflects on life on and off the river, topography, and how this landscape echoes in the speech, memories, and circumstances of the people he encounters. Their lives provide a kind of living archaeology, and Burroughs's careful descriptions of their voices and habits open a door into history. As quiet and powerful as a river itself, this is a wise and beautifully written narrative of nature, people, and place by one of America's finest writers.

  • 0395643821
  • 9780395643822
  • Franklin Burroughs
  • 1 April 1993
  • Houghton Mifflin (P)
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 208
  • Reprint
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