Deep & Wild is Laura Jackson's debut essay collection. A lifelong West Virginian, Jackson employs her knowledge of and curiosity for the region to describe life in West Virginia while dismantling stereotypes portrayed in popular media with humor and tenderness. Jackson works to describe what is special about her home, looking head-on at all the ways life in West Virginia may be wonderful and terrible, beautiful and ugly. Moving beyond all-too-common Appalachian stories of hardship and poverty, Jackson’s collection revels in joy, family, and nature.

 

Through her essays, Jackson invites readers to peer under creek rocks for crawfish, look a little more fondly at opossums, take a road trip to an annual ramp festival, and learn why not to trust a GPS along West Virginia’s rugged roads. From her living room to Appalachian hollows, Jackson approaches the sublime, seeking truths in the removal of a stump from her backyard and in John Denver’s famous song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” As Jackson reflects, “As writers, we know it’s our job, not only to tell our stories but to tell the stories of those who came before us, who never had a turn at the microphone.”