Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/787068
from www.outdoorstories.com). This is the talented author's second book-length venture into storytelling, with his previous effort, Ten Was the Deal, having carved a comfortable niche in the ranks of contemporary Southern tellers of sporting tales. The book's subject matter ranges widely and encompasses the quarries and activities that typify local outdoor pursuits in the heartland of the South—whitetails and cottontails, bass and a first gun, simple culinary pleasures, little things that are part of the sporting experience, and much more. If you read the book's title story and don't find yourself dabbing at your eyes or with a catch in your throat, some serious self-examination is in order. The piece is that moving and meaningful. Mostly though, this is just relaxed literature on the outdoors in the vein of Havilah Babcock, Archibald Rutledge, Robert Ruark in his "Old Man" pieces, or Charlie Elliott at his best. As Southern as a slice of pecan pie or Vienna sausages and Saltines on a summer fishing trip, this is a book meant not just for sons and daughters of the South, but anyone who relishes those warm and winsome hours devoted to being astream or afield. n been used to describe them. Tom McIntyre is unquestionably one of this breed, and in Augusts in Africa: Safaris into the Twilight (Hardback, Skyhorse Publishing, 276 pages, illustrated by Andrew Warrington, $27.99), he shares more than two dozen exquisitely crafted tales of his experiences in what must truly be, per his book's subtitle, the twilight of an extended golden era of sport that traces all the way back to William Cornwallis Harris in the 1830s. McIntyre's greatest strength as a writer—and make no doubt about it, he is larger than life in a literary sense as well as in person and in lifestyle—is his knack to take you with him. These vicarious journeys invariably typify truly first-rate writing on hunting. Hemingway at his best had the knack, Ruark had it in an even larger measure, and in this book McIntyre rubs shoulders with them. You can read a single piece, then rejoice while ruminating, or devour the entire work in a single setting. Either way, you'll be richly rewarded. Finally, as a nice counterpoise to stories of big game and distant locales, there's John P. Faris, Jr.'s We'll Do It Tomorrow: Southern Hunting and Fishing Stories (Hardbound, 253 pages, illustrated, $28.99