Seeds
One Man's Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
"Seeds reads like the best of a roundtable discussion amongst John Muir, Bill Bryson, and David Sedaris. From the fields of Gettysburg to the home of Kerouac, Horan takes an unlikely premise and weaves it into a story that's poignant, insightful and unexpectedly humorous. This is more than a book about seeds—it's about literary heroes, forensic forestry, and self-discovery." —Spike Carlsen, author of A Splintered History of Wood
The Orchid Thief meets Botany of Desire meets Driving Einstein's Brain in Richard Horan's Seeds, the chronicle of one man's quest to understand the influence and impact of trees in American life and literature—and his mission to collect seeds from the homes of Kerouac, Welty, Wharton, Kesey and twenty other authors, to preserve the literary legacy of American forests for generations to come.
What happens when a literary obsession meets a botanical quest across the American landscape?
A Literary Road Trip: Travel with Horan from the homes of Faulkner and Kerouac to historic sites like Gettysburg on a quest to connect with America's greatest writers.Botany Meets Biography: Explore the surprising connections between famous authors and the trees that witnessed their lives, from Thoreau's Walden Pond to Edith Wharton's grand estate.A Unique Quest: Follow a mission to collect and grow seeds from the trees that inspired American literature, a project to preserve a living legacy for future generations.Nature Writing for History Lovers: Part travel memoir, part celebration of the natural world, this book will change the way you look at the trees in your own backyard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"My cockamamie scheme...I would go around the country collecting tree seeds at the homes of famous people I admired, grow them into saplings, then buy a cheap parcel of land and plant them there." So begins Horan's whimsical journey, which quickly evolves into the focus for a new book (after the novel Goose Music). Though the repetitive, sometimes sweeping pattern of traveling, researching, gathering, and briefly recounting tidbits may not awaken new interest in the chosen authors' lives, and though tepid reflections ("Edith Wharton was filthy rich, and she sure could write one hell of a story"; "Henry Miller was the writer who...saw the truth of life") don't elucidate why particular icons have influenced Horan, his enthusiasm propels the book. Read as the tale of an amateur naturalist's road trip rather than as a curious, profound homage to literary giants, Seeds carefully reminds us of lands and homes that are worth preserving, provoking questions of legacy. Trees become lodestones for memory, charged with history and grandeur, and Horan concludes his project in a particularly inspiring way, emphasizing how the merest "seed" of an idea can flourish with perseverance.
