BOOK 



MARKET 



Sound Reading 



for Chilly 

 Winter Evenings 



By Daun Daemon • Photographs by Herman Lankford 



The time for 

 splashing in 

 the waves is 

 months past, 

 but the call of 

 the sea is as 

 strong now as in 

 the sultry days of 

 summer. Wintry 

 afternoons are 

 perfect for 

 whipping up a cup 

 of hot chocolate, 

 sitting in your 

 favorite reading chair, 

 and exploring the 

 Coastal Plain or 

 discovering tips for 

 your next foray across 

 the dunes with your 

 camera. Your young 

 friends can read alongside and swim like 

 a shark in the sea or romp with a pet wave. 



Into the Sound Country: A 

 Carolinian's Coastal Plain, by Bland 

 Simpson with photographs by Ann Cary 

 Simpson (University of North Carolina 

 Press, ISBN 0-8078-4686-4). 



Bland Simpson does not sit still. In 

 Into the Sound Countiy, he's always 

 moving — in a car, on foot, by boat and 

 through time right into the Tar Heel 



landscape and people's 

 lives. You will ride with 

 him down coastal 

 highways and bump 

 along backroads, glide 

 through wetlands 

 thick with vines and 

 hike through 

 maritime forests, 

 stop off at a 

 country store and 

 travel back to the 

 days when 

 flocks of ducks 

 and geese 

 rolled across 

 the sky like 

 thick smoke. 

 If you've 

 lived the city life all your years 

 or visited only the prime tourist spots on 

 the coast, Simpson will introduce you to a 

 North Carolina you've never experienced. 

 He easily juxtaposes the crazy clutter of 

 coastal towns and cities with the simple 

 serenity of lowland swampscapes. The 

 narrative is a delightful, sometimes brutal, 

 often revelatory tumble of images that 

 never overwhelms and will on occasion 

 catch your breath and knock it clear to the 

 sounds. 



Using such images, Simpson 

 reminds us of the historical importance of 

 scuppernong grapes, the brutality of the 



Tuscarora Wars, the eerie mystery of the 

 Maco light (which Simpson himself 

 witnessed one spooky night) and much 

 more. He recounts murder mysteries, 

 leaves no questions about where he stands 

 on environmental issues and demonstrates 

 the value of a backwater buddy who will 

 pull you out of a scrape faster than a 

 cottonmouth strikes. 



One of Simpson's many gifts as a 

 writer is an ability to intermingle literary 

 references with names and events 

 dropped from history and cozy it all up 

 next to, say, the tale of an outdoor 

 excursion with his wife and children. He 

 does this effortlessly and without making 

 a mess of the telling. Some sentences — 

 sentences, mind you, not paragraphs, not 

 pages — blend history, family, landscape, 

 action and elements as incongruous as 

 corporate hog farms and a Coca-Cola- 

 gulping bear. And many of his jam- 

 packed one-sentence paragraphs speak in 

 a voice that seems to me a cross between 

 novelist William Faulkner and my great- 

 aunt Verlee, a mountain woman who 

 could talk. 



Even Simpson's personal stories are 

 filled out with fact and fancy drawn from 

 folktales and other peoples' lives. 

 Reading his memories and reliving his 

 exploits evokes my own recollections of 

 the upper foothills, the Blue Ridge 

 Parkway, Boone and Blowing Rock. His 



30 WINTER 1998 



