focuses on the natural history of a strip of coastal prairie lying roughly between Corpus Christi and Galveston and once inhabited by the poorly known and much maligned Karankawa Indians. It serves as home base for an exposition of Bedichek's philosophy, providing a convenient local setting for richly tailored essays on wildlife, soil, human skin, and a variety of other topics suggested by a wide-ranging intellect. Bedichek's philosophy, if it can be reduced to a few words, is essentially that humans must learn to live on peaceful and conciliatory terms with our natural environment.