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Book: Bland and Ann Cary Simpson Come to Weymouth Been to a book-release party recently? Well, you have a chance to attend such a gathering for author Bland Simpson and his wife, photographer Ann Cary Simpson at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities on Sunday, Nov. 5 at 3 p.m. That's when the Simpsons' new book, "The Inner Islands: A Carolinian's Sound Country Chronicle," (University of North Carolina Press. 232 pp. $34) will go on sale -- and it's a good time to grab a few signed Christmas copies for Carolina friends, nautical book lovers or plain ole cerebral bookworms. The recipients of your present won't be disappointed. And you won't be either. Simpson is a master storyteller with a keen eye for detail -- and he possesses a knowledge of the state's coastal regions that's second to none. Moreover, he's a prose stylist of distinctive talent. If you don't know Simpson's work, you should. His many books include "Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering" and "Into the Sound Country: A Carolinian's Coastal Plain" (both from The University of North Carolina Press). A member of the Tony Award-winning Red Clay Ramblers, Simpson has collaborated on such musicals as "King Mackerel & the Blues Are Running," "Kudzu" and the Broadway hit, "Fool Moon." He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was the 2005 Fine Arts recipient of the North Carolina Award, the state's highest civilian honor. A companion to "Into Sound Country," Simpson's "The Inner Islands" is a thorough examination of the islands that survive inside the barrier of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Part travel log, part history, part memoir delicately tinged with Elizabethan syntax, Simpson's north-to-south trip through some of the state's least known locales will make you want to rent a boat and travel from Machelhe Island to the Cape Fear chain. In a recent interview, Simpson explained his inspiration for the book: "I could find virtually nothing on these inner islands (most of them, anyhow -- obviously Roanoke and Harkers islanders have been much written about!). And, as the ones I know about have always intrigued me, I decided I wanted to go exploring and see what turned up. Places like Durant Island, which I could see from the Alligator River Bridge, and Harbor Island in north Core Sound, where my wife, Ann, took me by boat, really intrigued me, and it's just plain and simple old-fashioned 'wonder what's out there' sense of exploration that provided the inspiration to do this." A good many of the islands explored by Simpson can't be found on a map of the region, and in many cases the secrets they hold haven't been collected in book form. There are Colonial, Civil War and contemporary narratives aplenty to hold the reader's attention. By discussing the Civil War history of the Huggins Island Battery located near Swansboro, Simpson is likely to have Civil War buffs searching the island with metal detectors. The old bombproof and barracks were torched by Federal troops, but much of the earthen fortification still stands. "The embankments, though, still stood, as sound as the day they were finished in late 1861, and Fort Macon's manager Paul Branch has called them 'the most unspoiled example of Confederate earthwork fortifications surviving on the North Carolina coast.' And so they stand yet, old parapets overgrown with and protected by small trees and vines on Huggins Island's southwest point, the only pounding they will ever take coming from summer hurricanes and winter nor'easters." Sunday, Nov. 5 promises to be a wonderful afternoon at the Weymouth Center. No doubt, Simpson will spice up his reading with a few of his original tunes. Come early and get a good seat. |
