"The history of a big river is much like the water itself. Travel down it, and you'll find people and places sure to surprise and enlighten you. So it is with Voices of the Apalachicola. . . . History buffs, writers, researchers, biologists, and naturalists should find the book valuable."--Tallahassee Democrat
"Captures the uniqueness of the Apalachicola basin, the technology that has channeled the river’s promise, and the threats to its health."--Panama City News Herald
"With this book, you can vicariously experience one of America's longest and wildest continuous wetlands. . . . [A] fascinating set of oral histories."--Red Hills Writers Project
One of the main water resources for Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, the Apalachicola River begins where the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers meet at Lake Seminole and flow unimpedted for 106 miles, through the red hills and floodplains of the Florida panhandle into the Gulf of Mexico.
Voices of the Apalachicola is a collection of oral histories from more than thirty individuals who have lived out their entire lives in this region, including the last steamboat pilot on the river system, sharecroppers who escaped servitude, turpentine workers in Tate’s Hell, sawyers of “old-as-Christ” cypress, beekeepers working the last large tupelo stand, and a Creek chief descended from a 200-year unbroken line of chiefs.
