Bless your hearts if you surfed over to this blog for the sole purpose of figuring out what that Schaefer guy is doing with that Mabel Loomis Todd book.
Well, rest assured all is well: Nature’s People: The Hog Island story from Mabel Loomis Todd to Audubon has been released in print and e-book form and is currently available wherever books are sold.
It has been a long and winding road that has gotten Nature’s People here. All started so innocently in 1981 on the island when I made the connection between the Todd Wildlife Sanctuary and Emily Dickinson. Still amazes.
And, truly, Nature’s People is such a good story. I trust a wide range of genre-hoppers will enjoy the narrative, but the later chapters with details about life on the island might bog down a bit. I tell folks the first couple chapters set up the island story with the last bunch of chapters getting into the nitty-gritty of the details gleaned from archives and interviews. That’s where it gets juicy.
Oh. And the notes, or endnotes. The majority of them don’t just cite the source, but add story elements to enrich the narrative. I tell folks it’s a bit like a treasure hunt: the deeper you look the richer the story.
Then the appendices have stuff hardly anybody has seen, let alone read, including the entire collection of essays by Mrs. Todd herself that she called “The Epic of Hog.”
There’s so much I could write here, but I’ve worked pretty hard to get the book to sound conversational and, well, I figure if you’ve gotten this far, you really need to have a copy. E-book is going for less that 10 bucks with the print version about twice that. Ain’t bad. And the narrative will keep you entertained.
Here’s a title page teaser:
Be sure to check out tomschaefer.us. Lots about the book and me there. Sure would like to hear from you when you have some thoughts about all this.
