Blending history, oral history, autobiography, and travel
narrative, Bland Simpson explores the islands that lie in the
sounds, rivers, and swamps of North Carolina's inner coast. In each
of the fifteen chapters in the book, Simpson covers a single island
or group of islands, many of which, were it not for the buffering
Outer Banks, would be lost to the ebbs and flows of the Atlantic.
Instead they are home to unique plant and animal species and
well-established hardwood forests, and many retain vestiges of an
earlier human history.