Ghosts of an Old Forest: Essays on Midwestern Rural Heritage

In the Ohio counties of the Alleghany Plateau, 19th-century barns hewn from old-growth wood rest near remnant forests, reminders of the state’s deep agricultural roots and rich ecological past. Through fourteen linked, meditative essays, Deborah Fleming, author of the award-winning Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape, persuasively and passionately argues for protecting these vestiges of the region’s natural and rural history.

Fleming describes domesticated and wild nature on her farm; delves into Ohio’s rich history of agriculture; tackles the issues of litter and pollution; decries the practice of hydraulic fracturing (or ＂fracking＂); and reflects on changes in communities bordering rivers, which are often the most exploited by extraction industries.

Deborah Fleming is the author of Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape, which won the PEN-America Diamonstein/Spielvogel Art of the Essay Award for 2020. She has also published five collections of poetry, a novel, and four volumes of scholarship. Previously a professor of English at Ashland University and winner of the Faculty Research Award, she served for many years as director and editor of the Ashland Poetry Press.