About the Books
Their Wild Island
Set on Georgia’s coast, this timely and engaging story follows 13-year-old Jack from Atlanta as he uncovers a decades-old environmental struggle during a spring break visit with his grandfather. Blending historical fact with heartfelt fiction, in Their Wild Island, Bolster introduces young readers to the real-life efforts that preserve one of America’s most treasured landscapes.
Jack and Papa Joe find adventures while camping in the wild heritage preserve of Little Tybee Island. For urban Jack, it is all new, and he develops a relationship with this unique environment that may last a lifetime. His relationship with Papa Joe grows with each adventure, and it is clear their relationship will last a lifetime. They meet the marsh critters, including a mother dolphin, and wade into today’s struggle to keep this marsh environment wild forever.
This novel provides a taste of Georgia's environmental history. The narrative includes Papa Joe describing efforts to halt coastal mining during his youth. While the characters are fictional, the historical events are based on Bolster’s nonfiction account, Saving the Georgia Coast, published by the University of Georgia Press. The account covers the mining crisis and passage of the 1970 Coastal Marshland Protection Act.
Bolster knows today’s young people will be needed to safeguard Georgia’s coastal marshlands. Young Jack tells his story of discovery, wonder and purpose. He joins Papa Joe in the fight to keep “their” island wild.
Saving the Georgia Coast
Fifty years ago Georgia chose how it would use the natural environment of its coast. The General Assembly passed the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act in 1970, and, surprisingly, Lester Maddox, a governor who had built a conservative reputation by defending segregation, signed it into law. With this book, Paul Bolster narrates the politics of the times and brings to life the political leaders and the coalition of advocates who led Georgia to pass the most comprehensive protection of marshlands along the Atlantic seaboard.
Saving the Georgia Coast brings to light the intriguing and colorful characters who formed that coalition: wealthy island owners, hunters and fishermen, people who made their home on the coast, courageous political leaders, garden-club members, clean-water protectors, and journalists. It explores how that political coalition came together behind governmental leaders and traces the origins of environmental organizations that continue to impact policy today. Saving the Georgia Coast enhances the reader's understanding of the many steps it takes for a bill to become a law.
Bolster's account reviews state policy toward the coast today, giving the reader an opportunity to compare yesterday to the present. Current demands on the coastal environment are different-including spaceports and sea rise from climate change-but the political pressures to generate new wealth and new jobs, or to perch a home on the edge of the sea, are no different than fifty years ago. Saving the Georgia Coast spotlights the past and present decisions needed to balance human desires with the limits of what nature has to offer.
What People Are Saying
“In addition to their breathtaking beauty, Georgia’s 368,000 acres of tidal marshes serve as vital nurseries for shrimp, crabs, oysters and countless other marine creatures. They filter pollutants from water and protect the land from fierce storms at sea — and do it all for free. In 1970, in the face of dire threats to the marshes, courageous lawmakers, scientists, lawyers, poets, conservationists and others banded together to pass landmark legislation to save and protect the marshes from ruin and destruction. In this remarkable book, Paul Bolster tells the dramatic and riveting story of the hard-fought, often bitter – but ultimately successful – battle to save the marshes, the heart and soul of Georgia’s magnificent coast.”
— Charles Seabrook
“This surprising book is an insider look at how Georgia’s crown jewel came to be– a lesson from the past and an important template for the future. Paul Bolster has written a carefully researched, character-driven, and comprehensive environmental history of the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act. It is an eye-opening labor of love”
— Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Drifting into Darien
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