The bluegill darted away from the bank and swam to the edge of the moon-bright shallows and vanished into the deep water through a dark seam.
—from “A Lovely Simplicity"
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BOOKS
Cogan’s Woods
By Ron Ellis
Foreword by Rick Bass
Preface by Nick Lyons
The taking of the gear from the trunk was done with a great deal of ceremony. Dad poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos, lit a cigarette, then stood quietly for a few moments just studying the darkness and listening. Though I was close by, I suspect he was, during those brief moments, very much alone with his memories and with familiar sounds and voices I could not hear.
—from Cogan’s Woods
PRAISE FOR COGAN'S WOODS
The act of remembering is above all a celebration of cherished things—friendship and family, storytelling and nature, the physical senses, and the beauty of permanence existing right next to stunning impermanency. The brevity of such things in any individual’s life is all the more reason for noticing them, and celebrating them, as Ellis has done here so well.
RICK BASS
Cogan’s Woods is a wonderfully textured portrait of a father and son discovering each other and the deep forest in which they hunt. It makes me think of Harry Middleton, though Ellis’s voice is new and richly his own.
NICK LYONS
With Cogan’s Woods, Kentuckian Ron Ellis has added a superb volume of prose to our permanent literature. Not many books I see do that. . . Cogan’s Woods is as well-seasoned a literary debut as I can recall reading.
CHRISTOPHER CAMUTO
Of Woods & Waters
A Kentucky Outdoors Reader
Edited by Ron Ellis
Foreword by Nick Lyons
Brushes with Nature
The Art of Ron Van Gilder
Text by Ron Ellis
Foreword by Ron Schara
In That Sweet Country
Uncollected Writings
of Harry Middleton
Selected and Introduced
by Ron Ellis
PRAISE FOR OF WOODS & WATERS
This is as good a volume of hunting, fishing, and nature writing as I've seen. It gathers over a century of fine writing about the central Appalachian landscape from John James Audubon's day to the present.
—Christopher Camuto, Gray’s Sporting Journal
A superb collection. Ellis has covered an extraordinary swath of ground with this collection, the first that I know of to so thoroughly plow through the state's deep outdoor roots.
―Louisville Courier-Journal