The Old Man and the Swamp: A True Story about My Weird Dad, a Bunch of Snakes, and One Ridiculous Road Trip / John Sellers

Snakes alive! Judging from the cover of this memoir, you might guess you were in for a book-length swampy herpetological tour… which is not actually the case. It’s mostly the story of a father-son road trip, the attempt of a grown man to peel the layers away from his aging father to see why he was so “out there,” so unconventional, such an enigma in his life growing up.

His father was a naturalist of sorts, and one of his lifetime passions (it's a passion when you can barely eke a living out of it) was surveying the surviving numbers of the endangered copperbelly water snake in remote areas in southern Michigan. After living through his father's substance abuse, a messy divorce, and a childhood salvaged by the more reliable care (and income) of his teacher mother, the author approaches his father later in life to try to understand him better and repair their tattered relationship. He meets him in his former swampy stomping grounds, where he gets an idea and a reluctant appreciation of what his father was up to during some of those lengthy absences from home all those years ago.

This would be a dry slog through a wet swamp if it weren’t written with such humor and wit. The author is as "city" as they come, and for him to follow his father into an uncivilized mosquito-ridden swamp, without cellphone coverage or a Starbucks, to track down elusive snakes makes for some amusing reading.

Thanks to D. Puliafico for the recommendation.

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