Janisse Ray's "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" is a wonderful mixture of stories about family and the land; certainly the best that I have read since Terry Tempest Williams' "Refuge." None of the melodramatic navel-gazing or pedantic lectures that plague most nature writing here- just straight-up stories about home, heart, and place, and the connections that bind them together. Her tone is empathetic and hopeful, and for that reason I came away from this book with a better appreciation of my own family roots and a renewed sense of purpose. Very highly recommended.