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Talking To The Moon
Wildlife adventures on the plains and prairies of Osage country
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
256 Pages | 6 x 9 | 14 b&w illus.
$21.95
Talking to the Moon is an unusual and charming story of a Thoreau-like adventure in remote northeastern Oklahoma.
Following his university education and his service as a pilot in World War I, John Joseph Mathews returned to his beloved Osage country. He built a sandstone house on a blackjack-covered ridge in the midst of his ranch, and there he lived for ten years, stirred by a natural world that was still undisturbed by the demands of civilization. He became a part of the life that moved about his cottage.
In this beautiful account of what he saw and did and thought, Mathews describes his solitary life among the creatures of the ridge with rare perception and style.
His observations are based on the white man's seasons as well as the Indian cycles of the moon, and he discourses upon the eccentricities of man, the behavior of animals (including the communicative talking to-the-moon coyote), and the encompassing and particular beauty of his wilderness home. Even the most jaded reader will be touched by the sensitivity and generosity of Mathews' response to the natural world. To read Talking to the Moon is to be reminded that this world once existed for all of us.
John Joseph Mathews, who died in 1979, was one of Oklahoma's genuinely gifted writers. He was the author of Wah' Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road, a poetic description in prose of the spiritual life of the Indian, and a Book-of the-Month Club selection in 1932. His other books include Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. Marland (1951), about the controversial governor of Oklahoma and the founder of the company that later became known as Conoco, and The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (1961), a narrative history of his tribe. Talking to the Moon was first published in 1945 and is reissued with a foreword by Elizabeth Mathews, his widow. Mathews was the great-grandson of Old Bill Williams, a noted frontiersman, and was a mixed-blood Osage. For many years he served as a member of the Osage Tribal Council. Educated at the University of Oklahoma in geology and at Merton College, Oxford, where he took his degree in natural sciences, Mathews was a fine American blend of scientist and poet, philosopher and producer, historian and storyteller, Indian and white.
Forthcoming Events

Jill Hunting in Conversation with Mike Everhart at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History
Thursday. June 16, 2022 | 6:00 pm
Sternberg Museum of Natural History 3000 Sternberg Dr. Hays, KS 67601
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Meet Jill Hunting at Flint Hills Books
Saturday. June 18, 2022 | 1:30 pm
Flint Hills Books 130 W. Main Council Grove, Kansas 66846
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Author Talk with Jill Hunting at Full Circle Books
Tuesday. June 21, 2022 | 6:00 pm
Full Circle Books 50 Penn Place 1900 NW Expressway, Oklahoma City, OK 73118
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