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Sally Carrighar, Foreword by David Rains Wallace
Illustrations by Carl Dennis Buell

Trade paper, 224 pages, (5.5 x 8.5), with b&w illustrations
ISBN: 1-890771-53-8, $14.95

A California Legacy book

An elegant and lively depiction of nine animals spending a spring day on Beetle Rock, a large expanse of granite in Sequoia National Park, One Day on Beetle Rock is a classic of American nature writing. Drawing on seven years of close observation and inspired by the work of natural scientists, Sally Carrighar wrote with exquisite detail, bringing readers to an exhilarating consciousness of the search for food and a safe place to sleep, the relationship between prey and predator, the marvelous skills and adaptations of nature.

Back in print in a beautiful new edition illustrated by Carl Dennis Buell, with a new foreword by David Rains Wallace, this is a book to treasure, to read and reread many times.

Reviews:

“One Day on Beetle Rock is a book of rare distinction, at once a record of objective facts, of deep feeling without sentimentality, and intense and subtle perception expressed in beauty.”—New York Times Book Review (December 1944)

“Not a leaf-turn, not a shadow, not a footfall or a wingflash has escaped her. One can almost follow ‘the scents that lay like vines across the forest floor.’ The scene is tranquil but the pace is fast.”—The Atlantic (February 1945)

“One Day on Beetle Rock is one of the small, fine company of books that are not merely popular animal stories, or merely scientific studies of animals, but animal literature.”—Saturday Review of Literature (February 1945)

Author Biographies:

Sally Carrighar (1898–1985) was one of the most respected naturalists of her time. Awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for fieldwork in the Arctic, she traveled far and wide from her native Ohio. Carrighar was the author of ten books and also wrote extensively for movies and radio throughout the twenties and thirties.

David Rains Wallace has published over a dozen books on natural history and conservation, most recently the Official National Park Handbook for Yelllowstone. His third book, The Klamath Knot, won the John Burroughs Medal for Literature in 1984 and will be reissued by the University of California Press in 2003.

Carl Dennis Buell is an illustrator and naturalist whose work has been featured in museums and zoos throughout the country, as well as in numerous national magazines. He has been clawed, pecked, or bitten by most of the species of wildlife featured in this book. He now lives in upstate New York with the world’s greatest dog.