Most of us who live in the Port City come from somewhere else. Actually, most of us come from somewhere else UP NORTH. Gardeners who relocate here often find themselves both elated and frustrated. Elated, because we have a growing season that is something like 268 days long. Frustrated, because the intense heat of the summer, and the salt spray from the ocean, often defies our best efforts. Below are books we consider absolutely necessary to the Southern Gardener, especially the Southern Coastal Gardener.

Chronicles of the Cape Fear River
by Sprunt, James
Format:  Trade Paperback
Price:  $34.95
Published: DRAM Tree Books, 2005  

James Sprunt served on a blockade runner during the Civil War, and later became one of the wealthiest residents of Wilmington, N.C. Noted for his philanthropy, Sprunt loved the Cape Fear region of the Tar Heel State with a fervor that shone through in everything he did. Sprunt was also a much respected historian of the Cape Fear region, and his Chronicles of The Cape Fear River: 1660-1916 is widely recognized as the bible for those interested in the history of southeastern North Carolina. From the native Indians and first white settlers to the American Revolution, Civil War, Reconstruction and the beginning of a new century, Sprunt has written the definitive history of the region. It is undoubtedly the cornerstone of any bookshelf devoted to the Cape Fear. This trade paperback reprint of the book's second addition will be a prized possession for locals, students, newcomers, teachers or anyone else with an interest in the rich past of the lower Cape Fear

Cape Fear Rising
by Gerard, Philip
Format:  Trade Paperback
Price:  $16.95
Published: John F. Blair Publisher, 1997

In August 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a mecca for middle-class Negroes. Many of the city's lawyers, businessmen, and other professionals were black, as were all the tradesmen and stevedores. Negroes outnumbered whites by more than two to one. But the white civic leaders, many descended from the antebellum aristocracy, did not consider this progress. They looked around and saw working class whites out of jobs. They heard Negroes addressing whites "in the familiar." They hated the fact that local government was run by Republican "Fusionists" sympathetic to the black majority. Rumors began to fly. The newspaper office turned into an arsenal. Secret societies espousing white supremacy were formed. Isolated incidents occurred: a shot was fired through a streetcar bearing whites, a black cemetery was desecrated. This incendiary atmosphere was inflamed further by public speeches from an ex-Confederate colonel and a firebrand Negro preacher. One morning in November, the almost inevitable gunfire began. By the time order was restored, many of the city's most visible black leaders had been literally put on trains and told to leave town, hundreds of blacks were forced to hide out in the city's cemetery or the nearby swamps to avoid massacre, and dozens of victims lay dead. Based on actual events, Cape Fear Rising tells a story of one city's racial nightmare--a nightmare that was repeated throughout the South at the turn of the century. Although told as fiction, the core of this novel strikes at the heart of racial strife in America.