It never occurred to me that a land seemingly so bleak could hide such beauty and adventure. There are few places where one can step out of a boat without sinking to the knees in muck the consistency of axle grease. To most it would appear a maze of rivers and creeks between stunted swamp trees and mud. There is no way into this place except by small boat.

It is the second largest river delta in the U.S. The “swamp” consists of about 260,000 acres of wetlands located just north of Mobile Bay. The book is a memoir of my time in the swamps of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta in Alabama where I built a primitive cabin and spent fifteen years learning how to live like the “swamp people.” He broke that hickory nut between those bricks and ate it while he looked out over the playground.This is a quote from one of my characters. He opened the sack and pulled out two bricks and a hickory nut. One day a few of us snuck up to the top of that hill and got up behind him. Especially since he walked off to the top of the hill and ate it by himself every day. We never had much for lunch those days, so we was always wantin' to know what all he had in that sack. He always carried a paper grocery sack with his lunch in it. What little print there is on the page mostly consists of the quote below: This old boy used to show up at school back when we were kids. in Among the Swamp People is at the end of a chapter. He applied the “ Test” to his new book, Among the Swamp People: Life in Alabama’s Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, and reported the following: Key divides his time in Alabama between Mobile, Point Clear, and the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta.

In addition to novels and screenplays, Key writes fiction and nonfiction articles for both local and nationally distributed publications. His third novel, Fourmile (2012) received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal. Key’s follow-up novel, Dirt Road Home, was released in 2010 both domestically and internationally. In 2009, Alabama Moon was made into a feature film starring John Goodman. White Read-Aloud Award for Older Readers, and has been published in eight languages to date. His debut novel, Alabama Moon, was released to national acclaim in 2006, won the E. is a novelist, screenwriter, and speaker living on Alabama’s Gulf Coast.

Dirt Road Home by Watt Key