The Deer Camp
A Memoir of a Father, a Family, and the Land that Healed Them
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
For readers of The Stranger in the Woods and H Is for Hawk, a beautifully written and emotionally rewarding memoir about a father, his three sons, and a scrappy 100-acre piece of land in rural Michigan.
Some families have to dig hard to find the love that holds them together. Some have to grow it out of the ground.
Bruce Kuipers was good at hunting, fishing, and working, but not at much else that makes a real father or husband. Conflicted, angry, and a serial cheater, he destroyed his relationship with his wife, Nancy, and alienated his three sons-journalist Dean, woodsman Brett, and troubled yet brilliant fisherman Joe. He distrusted people and clung to rural America as a place to hide.
So when Bruce purchased a 100-acre hunting property as a way to reconnect with his sons, they resisted. The land was the perfect bait, but none of them knew how to be together as a family. Conflicts arose over whether the land-an old farm that had been degraded and reduced to a few stands of pine and blowing sand-should be left alone or be actively restored. After a decade-long impasse, Bruce acquiesced, and his sons proceeded with their restoration plan. What happened next was a miracle of nature.
Dean Kuipers weaves a beautiful and surprising story about the restorative power of land and of his own family, which so desperately needed healing. Heartwarming and profound, The Deer Camp is the perfect story of fathers, sons, and the beauty and magic of the natural world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Environmental writer Kuipers (Burning Rainbow Farm) recounts his family's connection to Michigan's landscape and its influence on his and his brothers' relationship with their father. Despite their father's philandering, domineering attitude and religious zeal, Kuipers and his younger brothers, Brett, who finds solace being alone in the woods, and Joe, an alcoholic with suicidal thoughts, had one positive connection with their dad: the outdoors though the hunting, fishing, or trapping trips would usually end with father Bruce angry and distant. In 1989, Kuipers's brothers and father bought a deer camp. Skeptical at first, Kuipers, then living in New York City, saw it as a chance to bond, but Bruce was unable to accept his sons' ideas about restoring the camp's overgrown farm habitat by cutting down stands of old timber and planting crops and trees and to better suit the ecosystem. Bruce fought to preserve the land as it was, causing continual friction with his sons; Bruce eventually relented, and in doing so, the men's relationships changed: Bruce finally found respect, Kuipers found a loving grandfather to his young son, Brett continued to care for and improve the deer camp, and Joe learned to become his own man by finding a piece of land to call home. Kuipers's gratifying narrative endearingly explores father-son relationships as well as the transformational power of nature.
