The Home Place

Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature

By: J. Drew Lanham

Narrated by: J. Drew Lanham

Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

From the fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist J. Drew Lanham.  

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".  

By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of Black identity in the rural South - and in America today.

©2016 J. Drew Lanham (P)2019 Tantor

My heart grew

My heart grew because of this book. Professor Lanham's writing is now beautifully etched in my heart and constant in my thoughts. This was one of those few in a lifetime books that I constantly seek, nurture and hold sacred. This book changed me and I promise that your reading will bestow unknown and unconditional gifts. We, the readers, are so grateful for the entire Lanham family and how what came before, what is and what will become is always found in the nature and land around us.

Beautifully written and narrated

Dr. Lanham’s memoir about growing up in the South Carolina piedmont is a delight. His life story is an interesting one, and his passion for the natural world really shines through. Plus, he does a great job narrating his own story.

Very Good

I got this title as part of the Plus program but it would've been well worth a credit. I thought it was a very thought-provoking listen.

Loved the insight!

I loved Mr. Lanham's accent and his insight into his connection with nature. I was grateful to be able to hear his stories about how race affected his connection with nature and how it had nothing to do with it. The focus of this book remains: his love affair with nature.

wonderful!

This is one of my best reads from the last 5 years. His storytelling combines ornithology, ecology, farming, rural experiences, and his own personal view on black history. His ability to deliver insight and passion in simple and compact phrasing made this a difficult book to put down. Everyone should read it.

Loved it

Thank you for sharing your story, and including all the ancestors (human and otherwise) and history.
Beautiful.

Wonderful story, Told beautifully

I really enjoyed this book. J. Lanham has a wonderful way with words and descriptions with science and poetry all mixed into one great book. I highly recommend!

Out of my normal realm

As a SC low country native, the authors love of nature & the home place resonated deeply with me. Sometimes I long to return to the home I once knew but know that home place no longer exists. The story felt familiar though it was not my own.

Interesting, yet Soothing

Interesting stories that educate, and in a low, calming voice. Comforting and calming so much so that I didn’t want it to end. So I listen again and again, like talking with a wise old friend.

Beautifully Done

I have so enjoyed listening to this book. You can feel the author’s love for his home place, his family and the land.

Outstanding except for account of killing deer

This nature memoir, is beautifully written and was one of my favourite books ever, up to the point of the graphic and upsetting account of the Author killing a deer, with apparently not even the slightest awareness that he was causing the deer pain (the deer does not die immediately). There follows then a comment about how vegans must eat soy beans and a reference to the land they grow on, which lost me as I am vegan and no, we don’t have to eat soy beans. I could not see the book in the same light after this and would not have started reading it had I known this account was included.