Summary

"August Derleth (1909-1971) lived all of his life in Sauk City, Wisconsin, the town that was the source of inspiration and substance for his vast range of writing.

"August Derleth (1909-1971) lived all of his life in Sauk City, Wisconsin, the town that was the source of inspiration and substance for his vast range of writing. He explored the meaning of the lives of the men and women in the village he called Sac Prairie on the banks of the Wisconsin River. And always present in the writing was the natural background - fields, woods, plants, marshes, waters, and the wild creatures of land and sky." "Derleth identified with Henry David Thoreau, and thought of his own home near the Wisconsin River as "Walden West." He used as the epigraph in his two Walden West books the quote from Thoreau on living deliberately and fronting only the essential facts of life. Derleth wrote over a hundred books in various genres based on living close to home. Especially compelling today are the writings that come from the observations of nature in his daily walks. Nature narratives, natural history essays, and philosophical reflectionsthese are the writings that make up this book, In the Course of My Walks." --Book Jacket.