Notes from the Shore

A portrait of the terrain and wildlife of Lewes, Delaware, interweaves personal reflection with descriptions of such local phenomena as ghost crabs, shore birds, sea worms, and whales. 17,500 first printing. $15,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Like walking along an ocean beach with a knowledgeable, articulate friend, reading this personalized natural history is a restorative experience. Ackerman, a freelance science journalist, writes about what she learned of and from her surroundings during the three years she lived on Maryland's Atlantic coast near the southern tip of the Delaware Bay. With grace and avid particularity, she considers the history and characteristics of this landscape of marshes, mud flats and "walking" sand dunes, whose movement is orchestrated by the ocean current that parallels the shore. She observes the annual mating of horseshoe crabs (under a spring full moon) and watches for shore birds, from the tiny, semipalmated plover to the great, DDT-threatened osprey. At low tide, she probes the tidal flats for mud worms (tube, acorn, ribbon, plumed) and parses marsh grasses (sea lavender, cordgrass, saltwort and Spartina) at dawn. Against this landscape's rhythms, Ackerman revisits her own history?her mother's death, her father's illness and her hopes to have children of her own.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ackerman, an accomplished writer who has contributed to a number of national and regional publications, is a Midwesterner transplanted to the Delaware shore. In this book, she turns her keen and discerning eye toward the environment she inhabits. Often despairing of nature's ability to repair what human activity has so totally disrupted, Ackerman eloquently details the natural history of a region often thought of as totally developed. She takes the reader on many journeys, stopping along the way to discuss various species of crabs, fish, and shore birds. Ackerman does not neglect the human denizens of the beach, introducing the readers to a number of engaging local personalities. Recommended for public libraries.?Randy Dykhuis, OHIONET, Columbus, Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a naturalist's account of her observations of nature around Lewes, a seaside town situated along Delaware's Atlantic coast. Ackerman's detailed descriptions of diatoms and sea and plant life--worms, whales, and osprey--generally lack lyrical beauty but exhibit a fastidious, microscopic perception and enthusiastic attention to every little thing that is inspirational. Nothing is too insignificant for Ackerman's examination. This quality, in combination with some thoughtful reflection, makes the book interesting to both readers with scientific backgrounds and those just awed by nature. In a style much like Annie Dillard's, though less erudite, Ackerman ponders the changes that accompany the ocean's movement, nature's growth and fluctuation, and the influence of humans on the direction of those changes. Many writers have said that the road to the universal is through the particular. Ackerman has certainly marked that as the starting point of her journey. Janet St. John