Great Dismal - (Chapel Hill Books) by Bland Simpson (Paperback)

About the Book

Great Dismal: A Carolinian's Swamp Memoir

Book Synopsis

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina-Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America's most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of the Great Dismal Swamp and its people. For this edition, he has added an epilogue discussing developments in the region since 1990.

Review Quotes

"A warm, beguiling history of the Great Dismal Swamp. . . . [P]ainstakingly researched. . . . Most of all, Simpson offers an alternative model for studying places and extracting the essence of their identity."--Media Evaluation Service

"An engaging portrait."--Publishers Weekly

"Fascinating yet disquieting. . . . [H]andsomely crafted."--Southern Quarterly

"I've always wanted to explore the Great Dismal Swamp, and now, thanks to [The Great Dismal], I have. [Bland Simpson] did a good and graceful, forceful job. I enjoyed it from start to finish."--Shelby Foote

"Indians, lumbermen, hermits, fugitive slaves, swamp rats, canal builders, and bird watchers have all enjoyed the slightly sinister beauty of the Great Dismal. Mr. Simpson's book, part history and part travelogue, entices the reader to join them."--Atlantic Monthly

"Simpson has given us a jewel of natural and human history."--New Yorker

"Simpson has written a most interesting personal memoir of his romance with the swamp. It is rich with the place's history and with stories of people who have lived in or near the swamp."--Robert Pittman, St. Petersburg Times

"This delightful book tells the thoroughly enjoyable story of one man's encounter with his favorite spot in nature. . . . Bland Simpson's Temple is the Great Dismal."--Georgia Historical Quarterly

"This fine book, chockablock with factual information, is also a moving experience, a book of the heart. . . . Simpson has come to the Great Dismal, and he owns the place, at least in a literary sense."--Fayetteville Observer

"Beautiful writing by someone who knew this famously forbidding tangle of canals and legends from childhood."--Annie Proulx

About the Author

Bland Simpson, who teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is author of Into the Sound Country (with photography by Ann Cary Simpson) and The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey. A member of the Red Clay Ramblers, an internationally acclaimed string band, he has collaborated on such musicals as Kudzu, King Mackerel & The Blues Are Running, Diamond Studs, and Fool Moon.