Page 86 - Tattnall County

her gentle-hearted yet strong-minded husband, Raven Waters, the wholeness and health of the land below the fall line is intrinsic to the wholeness of their lives and to those whose roots hold to the ghost stories of the way the land once was. Janisse grew up in neighboring Appling County, which is the setting for Ecology of a Cracker Childhood , her memoir and personal disclosure of the endangered plight of longleaf and wiregrass as well as the authentic community that once defned its people. “Ray grew up in a junkyard outside what had been longleaf pine forest, an ecosystem that has nearly

disappeared in the American South through excessive logging” reads an Amazon review. The book won the American Book Award, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the Southeastern Booksellers Association Award for Nonfction, and the Southern Environmental Law Center Award.

Janisse met Raven ten years ago at the forty-ninth Florida Folk Festival in White Springs, Florida, which is held on the banks of the Suwannee River every Memorial Day weekend. Raven, a letter carrier from Tallahassee,