The University of North Carolina Press

Books about the North Carolina Coast


Into the Sound Country
A Carolinian's Coastal Plain
BY BLAND SIMPSON
Photography by Ann Cary Simpson

Into the Sound Country is a story of rediscovery--of two North Carolinians returning to seek their roots in the state's eastern provinces. It is an affectionate, impressionistic, and personal portrait of the coastal plain by two natives of the regi on, writer Bland Simpson and photographer Ann Cary Simpson.

Here Bland Simpson tours his old waterfront haunts in Elizabeth City, explores scuppernong vineyards from Hertford to Southport, tramps through Pasquotank swamps and Croatan pine savannas, and visits Roanoke River oyster bars and Core Banks fishing shanti es. Ann Simpson's original photographs capture both the broad vistas of the sounds and rivers and the quieter corners of mossy creeks and country churchyards. Her selection of archival illustrations ranges from the informative to the humorous, from a turp entine scraper at work in the 1850s to a pair of little girls playing with a horseshoe crab on a Beaufort porch at the turn of the century.

A memorable journey into eastern Carolina's richly varied natural world, Into the Sound Country is for anyone who would spend a while in one of America's most intriguing and underexplored areas.

"I love reading this book. It captures the sights and sounds and smells of the North Carolina coast better than any book I've ever read."--Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides

"Like coffee and beer, the sound country, with its jumbled forests and sulfurous waters, is something for which you have to develop a taste. Most people never bother. Together the Simpsons succeed in showing us why the region is worth taking some adventur ous sips."--Raleigh News and Observer

288 pp., 61 illus.
$34.95 hardcover, $19.95 paperback

Read an excerpt


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