LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS Earns Awards and High Praise

 Lover's Leap Legends  No Responses »
Nov 022021
 

LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS

FROM SAPPHO OF LESBOS TO WAH-WAH-TEE OF WACO

Visit a Lover’s Leap on your Vacation—but don’t jump! Award-winning new book reveals locations of these tragic, but invented, Indian legends.

“The views,” adds co-author Crystal Payton, “are grand and these romantic stories, though fakelore, are fascinating.”

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.– Authors Leland and Crystal Payton are pleased at the popular and critical reception of their 352-page book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco. Published by Lens & Pen Press, it contains 545 color illustrations.

A reviewer on Amazon agreed Lover’s Leaps are intriguing places to visit: “This book is divided by area and would be a wonderful travel companion for side trips, or day trips to one of the legend sites and add an interesting and fun adventure to a vacation.”

Families have visited Rock City with its spectacular Lover’s Leap in Chattanooga for generations. How many realized that a short drive away in Gadsden, Alabama, leaping Noccalula is cast in bronze in a city park? Mark Twain’s hometown, Hannibal, Missouri boasts a stunning Lover’s Leap overlooking the Mighty Mississippi. Upriver in Wisconsin they found the spot where, in 1805, Zebulon Pike recorded the first known Lover’s Leap legend featuring Native Americans. Research unearthed many other obscure sites as well.

The Missouri Writers Guild awarded Lover’s Leap Legends First Place for Nonfiction, 2021. The book was also a Finalist in the Multicultural Non-Fiction category of the 2021 International Book Awards.

A Mind-Boggling Work of Research, concluded an Amazon top reviewer. “This is, I believe, the only book-length account of Lovers Leap legends in the United States and beyond, and it’s a terrific one. Folklorists both amateur and professional will find much to savor in this book. And did I mention that it has an excellent index, the sign of an author who has truly taken care?”

At the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Awards, the oldest exclusive contest for independent presses, Lover’s Leap Legends was awarded a bronze medal in the Popular Culture category.

A Benjamin Franklin Awards judge was enthusiastic: “Lover’s Leap Legends is a spectacular leap into contrarian history, a celebration of ” sentimental romantic infection.” It is one of the oddest surveys I have ever read; I could not tear myself away from it. Bonus, it is lavishly illustrated, and a gift at its retail price. Describing themselves as “former flea market pickers,” the author/photographers/cultural anthropologists are perversely suited to this adventure. And what a treasure trove of local legend and artifact. And they are seriously funny. I had no idea that our fascination with this myth was as firmly embedded as they find. WOW. I immediately wrote a half-dozen history buffs to alert them to this marvel.”

Midwest Book Review said, “An inherently fascinating, beautifully illustrated, impressively informative, expertly organized and presented study, Lover’s Leap Legends is an extraordinary, unique, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library collections.”

Lover’s Leap Legends, though intended for a general audience, has proven useful to scholars. A PhD candidate whose thesis examines the phenomenon wrote: “Your collection is really phenomenal and beautifully presented. I believe that everything you have written and collated provides valuable information and much food-for-thought for future scholarship. As I read it further, I am amazed at the variety of information you have collected. … Your publication … has really helped me to hone my presentation, so your work has already been useful in scholarship!”

The authors were honored that a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and celebrated author concluded: “Lover’s Leap Legends is the definitive visual sourcebook for an American tradition that is as disturbing as it is amusing.”

Lover’s Leap Legends is available at amazon.com. Lens & Pen Press currently has a sale offering all their titles at 50 % off postage paid. http://www.dammingtheosage.com/buy-the-book/

###

www.beautifulozarks.com www.dammingtheosage.com www.hypercommon.com

 

Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco

ISBN: 978-0-9673925-9-2

352 pages, 7.5×10 545 color illustrations

$35.00

 

 

 

LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS Garners Praise and Awards

 Lens & Pen Press, Lover's Leap Legends  No Responses »
Sep 252021
 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale on all inventory. All titles now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

Nikola Tesla, Niagara Falls and Lover’s Leap Legends

 Lover's Leap Legends  No Responses »
May 172020
 

Nikola Tesla, whose spark of genius helped harness the power of Niagara Fall, now overlooks his roaring, liquid engine.

May 17 – Only two years ago today, we were in Niagara Falls (Canada side)—on a photo safari for our then-upcoming, now-published book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco. My “Trip Notes” comment for that day: “Up early and over to Canada to shoot Nikola Tesla statue on Table Rock.” That’s Leland’s version of “early” …. i.e. up before sunrise to be in place when the light of the rising sun best defines the subject…. But I digress.

We had come to investigate the two similar, but different, legends of the Falls and wound up with an entire chapter examining the “Legend of the White Canoe, aka Maid of the Mist.” With the rich graphics associated with generations of travel to the legendary Falls and the complexity of the legend adapting to evolving social attitudes, it became its own full chapter in the book.

One of the great advantages of these research trips is learning so much beyond your stated subject. The Falls has a fascinating history of Indian presence, explorer accounts, pop culture iconography and industrial exploitation. We documented some of that as we explored:

Few of the scientific geniuses that unlocked the secrets of nature have the hero status they once enjoyed. An exception is Nikola Tesla who, though a brilliant electrical engineer, was New Age before the term was coined. His discoveries or improvements to existing technologies were impressive, but his alluding to death rays and limitless free electricity along with his dalliances in the paranormal and belief in extraterrestrials has struck a chord with contemporary fans.

Tesla has bronze memorial statues on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls.

OF DAYS REMEMBERED Quilt includes Warsaw Missouri’s Lover’s Leap

 Damming the Osage, Lover's Leap Legends  No Responses »
Oct 172019
 

Valorie Fauquier created this pieced and embroidered quilt for the 2015 Benton County Historical Society quilt raffle. Nine local landmarks are commemorated here. One block shows the Lover’s Leap on the Osage. Nowadays the leap ends with a splash in the upper reaches of Lake of the Ozarks.

According to the explanatory legend posted near the quilt, “Lover’s Leap remains an unusual rock formation along the Osage River. It can be seen across the river while standing near the south end of Drake Harbor,” which is on the lakeshore below downtown Warsaw.

 

 

 

 

Valorie spent several hundred hours detailing nine of the historical landmarks of Benton County. Members of the Historical Society sold raffle tickets through the summer and the drawing was held October 31. Mr. and Mrs. Troy Kessner of Independence Missouri had the winning ticket. They donated it to the Historical Society so everyone could enjoy it. We found it hanging in the Visitor Center, overlooking Truman Dam.

 

 

 

From our forthcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco:

Just below Warsaw is another Lover’s Leap also with a vague legend. This leap was modest even before Lake of the Ozarks flooded its base. The 1950s postcard (above left) shows the plunge would even be even less than when the Osage River ran underneath. Though lacking a retrievable story, this Lover’s Leap is pictured on postcards from 1909 to the 1950s and is even a block on a quilt illustrating famous local landmarks.

See a flipbook of sample pages at our website: Hypercommon.com

Damming the Osage and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.  Lover’s Leap Legends will be published Spring 2020.

James Fork of the White – Finalist in National Book Award Competition

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 222019
 

We are excited to announce that James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River has earned national recognition! We recently received notice that our book is a finalist in the Regional Non-Fiction category of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the world’s largest not-for-profit book award program for independent publishers. These awards are judged by leaders of the book publishing industry including many with long careers at major publishing houses.

 

 

 

 

 

James Fork of the White’s 352 pages describe a celebrated Ozark float stream, which has endured challenges as Springfield, Missouri, the largest city in the Ozarks, is within its watershed. Research for this book included  exploration along back roads, feeder creeks, mill sites, fishing hot spots and flating past towering bluffs. The James is a classic Ozark stream that just happens to course through a major metropolitan area. Lessons learned along its length and through its watershed will apply to other streams as they too face the pressures of increased usage.

Even though transformed and changing, the James is in many places still scenic; where it lacks wilderness esthetics, its history remains intriguing.

Leland and I have collaborated on a dozen books on the Ozarks or pop culture. Our earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.

Our next book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, will be published in February 2020. For the past three years, we have delved deeply into a remarkable sub-genre of legend and lore (“fakelore” some call it) tracing the source of the apocryphal stories attached to some of our most scenic landscape. In 352 pages with hundreds of color images (contemporary photographs as well as vintage images), we track these tales across America and to far flung precipices from Guam to Spain and points in between.

James Fork of the White and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. We’ll let you know when Lover’s Leap Legends is published