Author Juxtaposese Environment and Her Own Story

Big Spring Autumn by Bonnie Stepenoff available at Cape River Heritage Museum

Meet and Greet the author reception August 21, 2009 5pm- 7pm Cape River Heritage Museum. The wine and cheese reception includes an opportunity to purchase books with proceeds to benefit the Cape River Heritage Museum. The author will do a short reading at 6:30pm many beautiful photos of the Big Spring and the Ozarks will be on display.

For more information call 573 334 0405.

Author Juxtaposes Environment and Her Own Story

Local author Bonnie Stepenoff has written a new book about Big Spring, a natural wonder hidden in the Missouri Ozarks.

Stepenoff addresses environmental preservation fom a pre-colonial times to the 1930's when the flow of the Big Spring was changed forever. She weaves local and natural history of the area into her own story of growing up in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvannia where there was great beauty and poverty.

Stepenoff writes in the tradition of books like Karl Jacob's Crimes Against Nature and Terry Tempest William's Refuge as she pays attention to the parallels in the nature and culture of the Ozarks with her past.

A professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University and Curator for the Cape River Heritage Musuem, Stepenoff is the author of three books including From French Community to Missouri Town, Ste. Genevieve in the Nineteenth Century (2006) Thad Snow: A Life of Social Reform in the Missouri Bootheel(2003) and Their Father's Daughters: Silk Mill Workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania (1991).

The spectacular natural wonder called Big Spring near the Current River is hidden away in Missouri Ozarks Hills. Hired to do a historical study of the state park at Big Spring, Bonnie Stepenoff also kept a personal journal and created an engaging narrative about hills, hillbillies, poverty, and the landscape making people what they are. She weaves the local and natural history of the area into her own story of growing up in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania where there was also great beauty and great poverty. With little sentimentality, Stepenoff pays attention to the parallels in the nature and culture of the Ozarks with her past. She makes a case for preserving this natural beauty and the culture surrounding it for the lessons we can learn.

"Big Spring Autumn is an engagingly reflective account of both place and human experience. Bonnie Stepenoff fuses the insights of a seasoned historian and observer of landscape with personal recollections and deeply held feelings that should appeal to a broad audience."

--Richard Longstreth, George Washington University

Content provided by:

Nncy Rediger

Director/Editor-in-Chief

Truman State University Press

100 E. Normal St.

Kirksville, MO 63501

(660) 785-7199

http://tsup.truman.edu