Ghosts of an Old Forest: Essays on Midwestern Rural Heritage

Fleming

ISBN 10: 1606354930 / ISBN 13: 9781606354933

Published by The Kent State University Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 26404088157

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ghosts of an Old Forest: Essays on Midwestern Rural Heritage
• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1606354930
• ISBN 13: 9781606354933
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In the Ohio counties of the Alleghany Plateau, 19th-century barns hewn from old-growth wood rest near remnant forests, reminders of the state’s deep agricultural roots and rich ecological past. Through fourteen linked, meditative essays, Deborah Fleming, author of the award-winning Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape, persuasively and passionately argues for protecting these vestiges of the region’s natural and rural history.

Fleming describes domesticated and wild nature on her farm; delves into Ohio’s rich history of agriculture; tackles the issues of litter and pollution; decries the practice of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”); and reflects on changes in communities bordering rivers, which are often the most exploited by extraction industries.

The result is an evocative collection, which traces Ohio’s natural and cultural history―and serves as an urgent call to preserve its splendor.

About the Author

Deborah Fleming is the author of Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape, which won the PEN-America Diamonstein/Spielvogel Art of the Essay Award for 2020. She has also published five collections of poetry, a novel, and four volumes of scholarship. Previously a professor of English at Ashland University and winner of the Faculty Research Award, she served for many years as director and editor of the Ashland Poetry Press.