Claws

A boy meets a bobcat in a South Carolina swamp in this classic adventure story, now with handsome new artwork and a new foreword and introduction.

Unseen by readers for a century, Archibald Rutledge's story "Claws" is a fast-paced adventure tale of a young boy, Paul, lost in the foreboding terrain of Spencer's Swamp, the domain of the mighty bobcat Claws, who is deftly evading hounds and hunters alike. When Paul and Claws encounter one another at a perilous creek crossing, Rutledge's mastery of outdoors storytelling shines through in every evocative word.


The short story, originally written for publication in an early twentieth-century boy's magazine and included in a limited edition collection circa 1913, is now available as a project of South Carolina Humanities for the benefit of literary programs. This new edition of "Claws" is illustrated in handsome charcoal etchings by Southern artist Stephen Chesley. Award-winning outdoors writer and noted Rutledge scholar Jim Casada provides the volume's introduction and retired South Carolina conservation officer Ben McC. Moïse offers an afterword.


"These books remind us of Mr. Rutledge's command of the English language, his great skills of observation of the natural world, and his fondness for distilling universal truths from stories of local essence . . . It is good to have Mr. Rutledge with us once more." —Pat Conroy