A Handmade Wilderness [Paperback]

Donald G. Schueler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 1997

In 1968 two gay young men - one white, one black - quixotically decided to buy eighty backwoods acres in southern Mississippi, little realizing that they were embarking on the greatest adventure of their lives. Don Schueler's account of the twenty-five years that followed, during which he and Willie Brown transformed their "least worst land" into a wild Eden, is a modern saga by turns suspenseful, very funny, and deeply moving.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This back-to-the-land story has a novel twist: a white man and a black man living together in the backwoods of Mississippi. In 1968, Schueler (Temple of the Jaguar) and Willie Brown bought 80 acres of worn-out land, known locally as the sandhills, about 25 miles from the Gulf Coast. It had been logged, burned and generally ravaged; it contained two bogs, a stand of live oaks and numerous ravines. The author gives an engaging account of their efforts to restore "The Place." They encountered moonshiners, poachers and snakes (Willie was terrified). Despite devastation by Hurricane Camille, the pair persevered, and eventually they brought back the native wildlife and plants, restoring a complete "handmade" ecosystem. After Willie's death in 1992, Schueler donated The Place, now 200 acres, to the Nature Conservancy as the Willie Farrell Brown Nature Reserve. A rewarding story.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Schueler and his partner purchased a bruised parcel of rural land, their goal to restore it to an ecologically balanced habitat for indigenous plant species and wildlife. Though his thoroughly engaging chronicle posits the dicey situation of a white man and a black man making a home in rural Mississippi in 1968, Schueler's account is replete with amusing anecdotes that illuminate a quarter-century of interactions with neighbors vastly different from themselves and the conscientious caretaking efforts they expended. The saga embraces hurricane Camille's destruction of a newly completed section of their house, and the fortitude that led them to build again, and the acquiring of a bevy of animals in the bargain. Sadly, his partner died of AIDS, but Schueler's decision to turn the property into a nature reserve is fitting tribute to the joyful fulfillment of a shared dream. Alice Joyce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 23, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395860229
• ISBN-13: 978-0395860229
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,004,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoroughly entertaining read., December 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Handmade Wilderness (Hardcover)

For anyone searching for an entertaining book concerning nature with an amusing cast of characters both human and animal, A Handmade Wilderness fits the bill perfectly. Schueler is a fantastic story teller who is simultaneously funny and sincere about his mission - creating his own private utopia (on limited funds).

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than a walk in the woods..., April 25, 2001

By 

Mark Allen Knight (Mount Rainier, MD)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Handmade Wilderness (Paperback)

Very few books about nature can compete with time actually spent in nature. But this comes very close. Don Shuler tells the story of his 20+ year careful and loving relationship with an abused and exhausted piece of land in the Mississippi sand hills. His simple storytelling style makes vivid the plants, animals, birds and human beings that he finds in this special place. These encouters are so carefully described that I felt that I was experiencing them along with him. And I wanted very much to read all that he might have edited out of this volume. The book is sweet, poignant, and filled with an animist's sense of humility and wonder. I am very surprised it is not more widely known and up there with the A Sand County Almanac.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fullness of Time, October 19, 2005

By 

Eileen Corder (West Coast) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Handmade Wilderness (Paperback)

Somehow it was fitting that I found this book sitting patiently among a thousand others in a second hand shop. The photo on the back, of an interracial gay couple, and that on the front, of the swampy sandhills of Mississippi, brought up visions of racism and homophobia in the rural deep South. After a few chapters, though, these stereotyped expectations gave way to a story unlike any other I've read. Don Schueler's unique and relentless focus on nature, his deft writing that switches from humor to suspense to tragedy in the turn of a page, the enduring scope of his chronicle - 27 years that witnessed 80 acres of logged countryside once again blooming and burning, building and blowing away - begets a book of life that speaks for the individual, the region, the planet.

From human neighbors Roddy Ray, Lurlee, and Hovit, to pet dogs Sammie and Schaeffer, to Fafnir the alligator, Griswold the baby owl, gopher tortoises, wood storks, cottonmouths, black widows and countless species of flowers and trees, A Handmade Wilderness leads the reader through land hunting and house building, tree planting and grave digging, from Hurricane Camille to the inauguration of the Willie Farrell Brown Nature Preserve, all the while spinning a tale of the seldom seen and sometimes forgotten fauna, flora, and men of The South.