"A beautiful book...about nature the way Walden was a book about
nature. It should be read by everyone who still retains the capacity to
feel anything" (The New York Times).
Stunningly written and fiercely observed, a new edition of a classic
work of nature writing about a year on an Ohio farm, by Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Josephine Johnson.
Originally published in 1969, The Inland Island is Josephine W.
Johnson's startling and brilliant chronicle of nature and the seasons at
her rambling thirty-seven-acre farm in Ohio, which she and her husband
reverted to wilderness with the help of a state forester. Over the
course of twelve months, she observes the changing landscape with a
naturalist's precision and a poet's evocative language. Readers will
marvel at the way she brings to life flashes of beauty, the inexorable
cycle of growth and decay, and the creatures who live alongside her,
great and small.
A forerunner of iconic American women nature writers and a champion of
civil rights who marched in Washington against the Vietnam war, Johnson
intersperses these "delicate marvels" (The New York Times) with
profound reflections about racial inequality, urbanization, social
justice, and environmental destruction that speak powerfully to our
time.
Ready to be rediscovered by a new generation, The Inland Island is a
vital and relevant meditation on nature and time, capturing the wonder,
beauty, hope--and flaws--of our turbulent world.
