Between North Carolina’s coastal plain and the Blue Ridge Mountains lies the Piedmont: some 250 linear miles of rolling, long-settled lands covering almost half of the state. Geologically speaking, piedmont regions are found all over the world, but North Carolina’s Piedmont is among the largest in the United States, sitting along an environmental crossroads where northern and southern flora and fauna overlap, offering an incredibly rich natural diversity. Inhabited continuously for thousan...

Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina’s sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state’s Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portr...

Blending history, oral history, autobiography, and travel narrative, Bland Simpson explores the islands that lie in the sounds, rivers, and swamps of North Carolina's inner coast. In each of the fifteen chapters in the book, Simpson covers a single island or group of islands, many of which, were it not for the buffering Outer Banks, would be lost to the ebbs and flows of the Atlantic. Instead they are home to unique plant and animal species and well-established hardwood forests, and many r...

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina–Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America’s most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of ...

In Two Captains from Carolina, Bland Simpson twines together the lives of two accomplished nineteenth-century mariners from North Carolina — one African American, one Irish American. Though Moses Grandy (ca. 1791– ca. 1850) and John Newland Maffitt Jr. (1819–1886) never met, their stories bring to vivid life the saga of race and maritime culture in the antebellum and Civil War–era South. With his lyrical prose and inimitable voice, Bland Simpson offers readers a grand tale of the ...

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 region, 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 Croa...

As compelling as fiction, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey tells the dramatic story of the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey from her riverside home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901. Bloodhounds, detectives, divers, and even a psychic were brought in to search for her, and the case immediately became a national sensation. Bland Simpson, who first heard the tale as an Elizabeth City schoolboy, weaves this true story into a colorful nonfiction a...

Bland Simpson regales us with new tales of coastal North Carolina’s “water-loving land,” revealing how its creeks, streams, and rivers shape the region’s geography as well as its culture. Drawing on deep family ties and coastal travels, Simpson and wife and collaborator Ann Cary Simpson tell the stories of those who have lived and worked in this country, chronicling both a distinct environment and a way of life. Whether rhapsodizing about learning to sail on the Pasquotank River or eating ...

Back in printA longtime favorite of several generations of Tar Heels, Taffy of Torpedo Junction is the thrilling adventure story of thirteen-year-old Taffy Willis, who, with the help of her pony and dog, exposes a ring of Nazi spies operating from a secluded house on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, during World War II. For readers of all ages, the book brings to life the dramatic wartime events on the Outer Banks, where German U-boats turned an area around Cape Hatteras in...

The Coasts of Carolina captures the vibrancy of the North Carolina oceanfront, sound country, and interior shores behind the barrier islands. Scott Taylor, who has been photographing the coast for almost thirty years, and Bland Simpson, whose many coastal books have delighted readers for two decades, come together to offer an inviting visual and textual portrait organized around coastal themes such as nature, fishing, and community life, with an emphasis on particular places and s...

Best Creative Nonfiction of the South serves as a valuable resource for scholars, students, writers, and general readers interested in creative nonfiction both from specific areas of the South and across the region as a whole. This North Carolina volume, second in the series, contains essays that celebrate and document the Tar Heel state’s diverse cultures and geography, from the mountains to the sea. The writers included here come from diverse backgrounds, generations, and artist...

As compelling as fiction, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey tells the dramatic story of the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey from her riverside home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901. Bloodhounds, detectives, divers, and even a psychic were brought in to search for her, and the case immediately became a national sensation. Bland Simpson, who first heard the tale as an Elizabeth City schoolboy, weaves this true story into a colorful nonfiction a...