ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD by Janisse Ray

My husband and I have bicycled all over the southern part of Georgia, so that I particularly enjoyed revisiting the town of Baxley through this book and seeing it through the eyes of someone who grew up there. Janisse Ray's family owned a junkyard, and that seems somewhat incongruous in a book whose title includes the word "ecology." Oddly enough, the junkyard was a giant recycling zone of sorts, where discarded parts could be resurrected in other vehicles. It's a stretch, but I get it. The author alternates chapters about her childhood with observations on the deforestation and diminishing wildlife populations in the area. Her focus is largely on the longleaf pine, which was all but eliminated from the planet by construction, turpentine production and wood-burning locomotives. There's also a heartbreaking story about a captured gopher tortoise that will forever haunt me. Although, she was well-loved, well-fed, and well-educated, Ms. Ray did not have an easy life, having to dress and behave in accordance with her family's apostolic religious beliefs. Her family stories are mostly upbeat, though, except for that of the whipping her father doles out to all the children for witnessing an episode of animal cruelty without making an effort to stop it. Also, my husband and I obsessed for several hours over a math problem that appears in the book without its solution. Only in my household….