Customer Reviews

Grave Goods

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O'Grady, with a deft touch and encyclopaedic mind, writes a series of essays covering all kinds of uncanny or supernatural circumstances, some amusing, some sad, some perplexing. He debunks where appropriate, but allows the mystery to remain where it belongs. O'Grady has studied forestry, American history and literature, and his own mind in roughly equal measure. Ambling through his material with him is both fun and food for thought, like taking a walk through the forest with a lovably eccentric and erudite friend.

John P. O'Grady has written some igneously curious essays about ghosts and legends and forests and writers. He takes tremendous joy in sharing all the wonderful things he never learned in forestry school but has learned about forests. It is important to note that these essays are quite artful as they unravel or evolve. There is a sense that the stories are too complex, and topics too tangentially related to be unwound in front of a campfire without a map, but still they belong to the forests, of books and trees. Those interested in stories of American spaces will be tickled to find a grand range of locales, Maine, Roanoke, Idaho, New Jersey. O'Grady's undertaking is bonkers and engaging.

These essay-stories have an effect on the mind like some kind of elixir from an ancient forest. Things sparkle, the world looks different after you read them; you feel more alive. I've never read a book quite like this in my life. I am about halfway through and I find myself reluctant to read on because I don't ever want to finish! Then again, these essays will probably continue to deliver upon second and third readings; they are so rich and refreshing, generous and infectiously exuberant. O'Grady weds highly specific familiarity with nature to a deep, sweeping historical knowledge. The result is precisely the opposite of "scholarly." It's wild. And yet it's also ultimately friendly, perhaps even loving in a kind of impersonal, woodsy, ferocious way. I think if more people read this book, there would be less fear of death and more appreciation of life in our cultural zeitgeist. This book is its own little force of sanity.