Not long ago the Big Thicket of East Texas was still one of those places singular in its southernness, like the Mississippi Delta or the Carolina Low Country. Now its old-timers and their ways are nearly gone.

They will not be forgotten, though, for in My Grandfather's Finger Edward Swift recalls a Big Thicket populated by family and friends as gloriously vibrant and enigmatic as the land itself. From Camp Ruby to nearby Woodville and all the swamps, bayous, and forests in between, Swift shows us a place and time so fecund with humor, tragedy, and good talk that, in growing up there, he had no choice but to become a novelist.

We meet, among many others, Mother, a widowed war bride who would spring-clean the inside of her house with a garden hose, and Aunt Coleta, childlike and always surrounded by an entourage of kids half enchanted by her and half scared witless. Then there are Uncle Frank, who, with self-fulfilling flair, would have drawn a pistol at the merest suggestion that his family was dysfunctional, and, of course, Grandfather, who lost his finger to a machete and his mind to cough medicine.

A mystical world of carnivals, talking fiddles, houses on wheels, atomic bombs, and total-immersion baptisms, Edward Swift's Big Thicket was also a world in which he was loved unconditionally-and that alone makes it worth getting to know.

Photographs by: Lynn Lennon