Reviews of Our Books

PRAISE FROM READERS AND REVIEWERS OF LENS & PEN BOOKS

THE BEAUTIFUL AND ENDURING OZARKS

Almost as good as a visit!

Anyone who loves the Ozarks will be touched and moved by Leland Payton’s photographs, which capture the hills, plains, parks, towns and people of the place in all of their rugged, yet fragile beauty. Books of regional photography often feature dirt-dry text, but not this one! Mr. Payton’s brief history of the Ozark landscape is fresh, easy to read and full of interesting ideas. As an added bonus, he has included images from antique postcards and tour books, not to mention photos of wonderful vintage hillbilly souvenirs! This book is almost as much fun to explore as the Ozarks themselves.

The Ozarks are beautiful indeed!

THE BEAUTIFUL AND ENDURING OZARKS not only looks like the Ozarks, it has the feel of it. I live there. Ozark rivers are photographed in their best light. The region’s folklore is integrated into the text. Really high quality book and true to its title. Perhaps the best flavor of the Ozarks in book form I’ve seen.

Leland Payton’s ancestors were among the earliest settlers of the Ozarks. He himself was born and bred in the region. Hence, he brings the perspective of a true native son to the book; both its content and context capture the area in all its complicated beauty. Using text and image, Payton celebrates the Ozarks of myth and history as well as the Ozarks of folk and pop culture. His photographer’s eye basks int he natural beauty of its spring-fed creeks and wildly robust rivers. Payton has an especially soft spot for local color, such as the hill-country characters made famous in the paintings of native Ozarker Thomas Hart  Benton and whose descendants are still very much a part of the landscape. Payton clearly admires these folk who he calls “stereotypes with a ring of truth, entrenched bits of Americana not likely to disappear from our popular culture.” This slim, quirky book is every bit as iconoclastic as the people and places Payton writes about and photographs.

—June Sawyers, The Resourceful Traveler, Chicago Tribune Internet Edition

The book is not rhetorically or photographically reverential but realistic and with an eye for the beauty that surrounds Ozarkers in their everyday life. The Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks is an interesting, lively, and provocative examination filled with images created by a craftsman and thinker, a book that should be read as well as displayed as a coffee table artifact.

—Fred R. Pfister, The Ozarks Mountaineer

 

You know nature photographer Leland Payton? Wait ‘till you see where he’s been now.

The Ozarks.

And a collection of his photographic art is out already in a book called THE BEAUTIFUL AND Enduring Ozarks.

It’s the next best thing to being there. The way most of America was, it still is—in The Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks.

—Paul Harvey, on air

SEE THE OZARKS: The Touristic Image

See the Ozarks is a gem of a book. … The authors blend their own readable prose with information worth reading. And a uniquely high order it is; theirs is not a dumbed-down “picture book.” The Paytons understand very consciously the context in and about which they write. … It is clear that the authors … have kept up with the rapidly evolving academic literature on tourism. … Every page displays brochures and/or historical photographs, maps, postcards—many of them rare and many of them from the authors private collection—that testify most obviously to the Paytons’ capacity for evoking the tourists’ sense of place about the Ozarks.

—Society for Commercial Archeology Journal

 

MYSTERY OF THE IRISH WILDERNESS: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness

“Leland and Crystal Payton’s Mystery of the Irish Wilderness is a fascinating, deeply-researched, and beautifully illustrated book. I recommend it very highly to everyone interested in Missouri and Ozark region history, in the history of the Catholic Church on the American frontier, and in the history of Irish immigrants in 19th-century America.”

—Kerby Miller author of Emigrants And Exiles: Ireland And The Irish Exodus To North America (1985) and Irish Immigrants In The Land Of Canaan (2003)

 

“Mystery of the Irish Wilderness is a beautifully-produced story of a little-known chapter in American Catholic history. It also illustrates how heroic priests struggled to keep the spark of religion alive in the wilderness and helped build the social institutions that were critical to American political and economic development. A lovely book.”

—Charles Morris, Author of American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America’s Most Powerful Church (1998)

 

Allure of the wild, the dedication of an Irish priest

This exquisitely photographed book belongs on the shelves of all who have an appreciation for the beauty and ruggedness of the American wilderness and the people it has drawn. Leland and Crystal Payton skillfully blend these elements in this well-researched story of a plucky Irish priest and his attempt to settle what is now known as the Irish Wilderness in the Missouri Ozarks.

 

Ozark Heritage Area Irish Wilderness

For the past year I have been researching the Ozarks for stories and events for our Heritage Committee. I have been working with the National Parks Service to gain Heritage Area for a ten-county area located in the Ozarks. I was born and raised in Howell County which is about 30 miles west of the Irish Wilderness. I have floated past the Irish Wilderness many times on the Eleven Point River. When I saw this book, I knew it would be added to my Library of the Ozarks.
Being Baptized a Catholic and attending a Catholic School just west of the “Wilderness”, I could not help think of my past as an altar boy and studying Catechism during my grade school years. Father John Joseph Hogan had a great passion for his people and the Irish Wilderness. This book is a must read for anyone that has lived in the Ozarks and wish to relive the past and hear the “Voices from the Hills”.
Spring is not far away and I will be loading up the canoes and kayaks for our float on the Eleven Point River in Oregon County. As I float past the Irish Wilderness I will be listening for Father Hogan. I just can’t wait. It is a pleasure to live in the Ozark Mountains and to be part of the past and the future. The book, “Mystery of the Irish Wilderness”, made it just a little bit more special.

 

The Irish were everywhere!

The Irish Diaspora is often thought of as east coast phenomenon. But they were a hardy, adventurous group desperate for land and a life of their own. They followed the sun west, guided by a Bishop who promised them a chance to develop their own world. And in deepest southern Missouri it looked as though they would succeed. But the civil war intervened and a “Lost Colony” was the result. This carefully researched record uncovers a mystery worthy of its own movie! War, deceit, passion and the indomitable spirit of a people freed of their Old-World bondage, only to land and then disappear in the new world!

 

“Even the most unsuspecting pieces of land can be the most saturated in history. Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness takes a look at the region in the southern United States known as the ‘Irish Wilderness’ where a colony of Irish Potato famine immigrants once lived, then left. Covering the entire history of the region, and enhanced with full color photographs, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness is highly recommended to community library American history collections.”

—Midwest Book Review

JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE: Transformation of an Ozark River

An Indispensable Book

Readers of books on Ozarks culture and geography are probably familiar with Leland and Crystal Payton, whose earlier works, Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, The Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks, and others, explore elements of the Ozark experience in a reflective and sympathetic though unromanticized way. …

James Fork of the White is an oversized book, 352 pages with full-color illustrations from start to finish. Many of the illustrations are photographs by Leland Payton, whose work has documented the Ozarks for decades. Payton’s photographic gaze is contemplative, sometimes wry, and often focused on the human artifacts that have marked the landscape over the generations: old bridges, buildings, the remnants of milldams and springhouses, signs, and sometimes (though not insistently) an actual human. The overlook-at-sunset-in-autumn photo is not to be found – or if found, is likely to be a tad off kilter. Just as valuable in the illustrations are the vast numbers of historical images the Paytons have collected, including postcards, maps, clippings, pamphlets, labels, and other ephemera. Taken together, the historic images and the contemporary photographs create a rich visual portrait of the James River watershed. …

The James Fork’s legendary Galena-to-Branson float, itself a tourist attraction in its own right, was lost to the more mechanized allure of deep flat water, stocked trout, and big bass fishing.
James Fork of the White is a book I will return to again and again, both for the richness of its images and for the variety of its information. For residents of Springfield and the White River valley, and for anyone interested in Ozarks history and culture, this is an indispensable book.

 

Fascinating and fun!

The evolution of a river in the modern era has many dimensions—geology, politics, cultures, the rise and fall of towns, commerce—and Crystal and Leland Payton have once again used various techniques to capture the modern history of the James River in Southwest Missouri. These techniques involve reproduction of old photographs, maps, and promotional brochures, and lavish new photographs. Combining these graphics with a penetrating verbal narrative, the Paytons have given us what we all want and need to know about the White River’s largest Missouri tributary. …

I’m especially happy that the Paytons are interested in the economic and ecological health of the James River Valley. They have included opinions of several knowledgable people and provided their own thoughtful synthesis.

A short final section is entitled “Guardians of Water Quality” and describes the good work of several organizations and individuals who are dedicated to monitoring, protecting and improving the water of this compromised system. The organizations mentioned are the James River Basin Foundation, Ozarks Water Watch, Watershed Committee off the Ozarks, and the Ozarks Environmental and Water Resources Institute at Missouri State University. I have worked with all these organizations, and believe that the work of each of them in public education will be helped by the publication of the James Fork of the White River.

A wonderful tribute to a beautiful Ozark River

For nearly 20 years I was an Englishman living in the Ozarks who’s main hobby was fly fishing. Because of its fame for Smallmouth Bass, the James Fork of the White River (known to me as the James River) became a part of my life. I’d always been fascinated by the “float” history of the James, and was once very lucky to chat with a lady who’s father guided the Jon Boat float trips from Galena to Branson before Table Rock Lake was formed. In the last few years I lived in the area, this rich history of floating led me to convert an aluminum Jon Boat so I could guide fly fishing trips on local rivers, including the James.

Leyland and Chrystal Payton have lovingly catalogued the incredible history of the river and the surrounding area in a book that abounds with images both recent and historical.
Anyone who has a love of the Missouri Ozarks will devour this book and keep coming back for more. I thoroughly recommend it, and I’ve already purchased copies for my fly fishing Ozarkian friends.

 

LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco

 

A Mind-Boggling Work of Research

You’ve seen them along the roadside, those statues and markers that purport to represent the spot where an Indian maiden leaped to her death, typically from a high bluff overlooking a river or lake. Whether the cause was pursuit by an enemy tribe, pursuit by members of her own tribe because of a romance with an enemy, or just general lovelorn sadness, the maiden finds life unbearable. So off the cliff she goes, the heroine of a tragic, sentimental tale of love and longing, with the details of the incident lost in the swirl of time.

You’ve seen those markers and statues because, as we now know, hundreds of locations across the country – and the world – have borne the name “Lover’s Leap.” We know this because the photography/writing/collecting team of Leland and Crystal Payton have produced Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, an astonishingly researched book that takes these legends, painstakingly documents their origins, identifies their probable original author, and tracks their variations from the general theme.

How the Paytons managed to track down all these stories, and to collect an amazing variety of postcards, souvenir spoons, posters, sheet music, brochures, souvenir pebbles (yes, I remember those souvenir pebbles, a.k.a “Apache Tears,” from a childhood trip to Arizona), and other memorabilia, is nothing short of amazing. If you’ve seen their other books, such as Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, or James Fork of the White, you know what you’re in for with this book: an exhaustive, copiously illustrated book that weighs in at 352 larger-than-ordinary pages and traces every anecdote back to its first appearance, then for good measure throws in a reproduction of the 19th-century newspaper article where the story first appeared. This is clearly a labor of love. …

Unlike their earlier books, which tended to focus on Ozarks stories and locations, this book is nationwide in scope, and even devotes a chapter to international lovers’ leaps. While it is true that suicide by jumping from a high place is a real thing, and sometimes the Paytons do document an actual suicide attempt from a particular bluff or waterfall, the vast majority of these incidents fall into the category they call “fakelore” – bogus legends invented by a local storyteller or tourism promoter, intended to cast an air of mystery over the dramatic location.

Interestingly enough, the Paytons also document in great detail the almost immediate efforts at mockery and debunking. The book is dedicated to Mark Twain, the great anti-sentimentalist, and rarely does a legend emerge without a satiric poem or comedic play to make fun of it. To quote a 1906 filler in The Scranton Republican, “Judging from the number of ‘Lover’s Leaps’ at the various mountain resorts, the favorite amusement of the aboriginal maiden must have been jumping over precipices.”

This is, I believe, the only book-length account of Lover’s 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?

Wonderful stories with beautiful photos to go with each story

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. It is fun to read because some of the legends are stories we heard about as children.