Panayiota

Literature & Fiction

Manuel, John

Contemporary

lulu.com

A Jay in the Jacaranda Tree

Biographies & Memoirs

Travelers & Explorers

The coast of North Carolina remains one of the nation's top tourist draws, bringing in more than 8 million visitors each year to fish, fly kites, and build sand castles. For those who are about to make their summer vacation plans - those ready for more adventure than what they can find on the pier, those whose knees buckle at the thought of miniature golf, those with no more quarters for the video arcade - John Manuel offers his new guidebook The Natural Traveler Along North Carolina's Coast. An experienced writer on travel and the outdoors, Manuel says he wrote The Natural Traveler to combine the best of both worlds. It is comprehensive and current, with a special emphasis on natural areas and the wildlife that frequents them. The guidebook also covers traditional attractions, such as lighthouses, museums, aquariums, historic homes, restaurants, and lodging, he adds. This unique combination means that a few pages before learning about Tryon Palace, one of eastern North Carolina's most popular attractions, the reader finds out about the evening swolfhowlings led during the spring, summer, and fall by staff of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Immediately after Manuel profiles the famous seafood of Calabash, he leads readers into the nearby Green Swamp Preserve, where more then 14 species of carnivorous plants make their home. The Natural Traveler Along North Carolina's Coast begins with an overview of the natural history of the North Carolina coastal plain. Manuel traces the changes wrought to the coast by ice ages, hurricanes, Native Americans, and European settlers. He then describes each of the prominent natural features to be found on the coast today, from theopen offshore waters and sandy beaches to the longleaf pine savannas and densely wooded bottom lands beyond the tidal reach. For the curious, Manuel explains some of the North Carolina coast's most unusual phenomena, including Carolina bays - vast oval-shaped ponds, always aligned northwest to southeast, that are scattered throughout the coastal plain. He discusses many of the theories proposed to explain their origins, which have been attributed to everything from meteor showers to the spawning habits of prehistoric fish.

The Natural Traveler: Along North Carolina's Coast

History

Americas

John F Blair Pub

An ardent canoeist for more than forty-five years, John Manuel was first introduced to the solace, natural wonder and exhilaration of canoeing while growing up on the Chagrin River in Ohio, paddling an old Grumman canoe under the scrutiny of his father. Decades later, as he watches his elderly dad succumb to cancer, Manuel recalls this initiation into a lifetime of canoeing with both fondness and confusion. What was the allure of rivers? Was it the challenge of rapids, the natural beauty his father had known? Or was it the need to pursue his own life, to escape from home and family expectations? At times rollicking and playful as the rapids it portrays, The Canoeist also possesses a rare emotional depth. Manuel gives us a vivid picture of his own human experienceof falling in love, its elation and heart-rending turns; the intimate connection among paddling friends; the fight to save the natural places he reveres; the frustration and joy of bringing children into the canoeing life. Chapters named for a dozen eastern rivers carry the reader from such historic events as the fire on the Cuyahoga River and anti-Nixon demonstrations in Washington D.C. to the wild and some times dangerous watersheds of Manuel’s life. In part an ode to rivers, The Canoeist also affirms the vital importance of family and friends, and reveals a portrait of America in changing times.

The Canoeist: A Memoir

Sports & Outdoors

Water Sports

Jefferson Pr Llc

Hurley Cates, the 70-year-old protagonist of Hope Valley, is a retired factory worker who lives with his wife, Opal, on a hilltop farm on the edge of Durham, NC. Durham in the 1980s is undergoing rapid change from dying Southern factory town to a land of opportunity for new age entrepreneurs and unconventional youth. Hurley is determined to hold on to the heart of his world--his pristine farm with its 5-acre lawn and the house he built for his hapless son, Buddy. But when Buddy sells the house to a young female couple, Hurley's world threatens to unravel. He intends to tell the new neighbors how life is done on "the hill," but when he knocks on their door, Hurley is the one who is forever changed. Hurley becomes enamored of the beautiful Renata and intrigued with Danny, whose Southern farm upbringing gives her skills rivaling his own. The women, in turn, delight in Hurley's sense of humor and his homespun philosophy. Shy Opal feels left out of this triangle, but even she finds a place when Renata gives birth to a mixed-race child. Then, a storm hits the hill, leading to the death of a loved one. Finger-pointing and guilt threaten hard-earned friendships and marriages. Those who survive do so with a new-found sense of humility and grace. Hope Valley is a parable about overcoming the urban/rural, straight/unconventional, white/multiracial divide that besets modern America. Only by listening to each other and learning to forgive do the characters gain an acceptance of each other and of themselves.

Hope Valley

John Manuel

The Lower Canyons

Action & Adventure

Atmosphere Press

The View From Kleoboulos

How meeting a girl with a Greek mother in a smoky bar in Bath, UK, eventually led to living in Greece. Only it took the best part of 30 years! If you like lighthearted yet informative travel books, this is right up your street. Travel writing at its best. FETA recounts how the author and his wife drove from the UK to Rhodes with all they possessed in a white van, then set up home and began a new life. The book also contains plenty of amusing anecdotes from numerous visits to all parts of Greece over the space of three decades or more.

Feta Compli!

Travel

Solitario: The Lonely One

Literary

The Fablehood Trilogy: What I Learned as a Child

Memoirs

City Bear Press

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Books by Manuel, John