Books and other publications by Virginia S. Eifert available for purchase.
Virginia beginning a class at the Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin – about 1960.
Who was Virginia?
Larry’s mom, yes, but she is also considered one of the Midwest’s best nature writers.
With memorial collections of her work at Western Illinois University and the Illinois State Museum,
many of her books from the 1950’s and 60’s are now back in print as Ebooks.
Read her biography, see many photos and other work by an amazing woman at her own website: virginiaeifert.com
Out of print since the 1960’s, these are now in Electronic Reader book form.
Wild Life of the Mississippi River By Virginia S. Eifert Originally published in 1959 with line drawings by the author, plus a bonus section of Virginia’s photos and extensive research materials from the original publication.
“A thrilling kaleidoscope of nature!”
This is an ambitious book, just as the Mississippi is an ambitious river. Much has been written about our mightiest stream and its effect on our civilization and character. This book differs from its predecessors because it depicts the river almost as if man did not exist. Here is the eternal face of the river, from the ice of the north to the streaming bayou of the south. Here is the great mid-continent flyway of immigrating birds, the muddy moving world of fishes, the shifting banks of the myriad willows, the mysterious bottom land of tiny creatures, the surface film of water striders, the close-by air of the Mayflies, the soaring heights of the eagle. Away from the water, yet molded by it in centuries and in last spring’s floods, lie the banks, marshlands, cliffs and bars.
Bonus material: SOUTH TO THS SEA April 8 – 25, 1956 Virginia somehow talked her way onto several working towboats, business boats that simple didn’t carry passengers and didn’t have such things as safety lines. In fact, the boat in this trip journal, the Cape Zephyr, carried over 2,000,000 gallons of gasoline which at one point lost power and plowed into a sand bank. This was found in a binder, unread for decades, unedited and typed with few corrections. Many of these sections show a clear path into River World and her other river books. In other words, these are her creative notes that later books came from.
by Virginia S. Eifert
first printed in 1957 – 248 pages
Author of 20 books and hundreds of short stories, Virginia Eifert spent much of her time during the 1950’s traveling Midwestern rivers doing field research and photography for her river books. She eventually traveled over 6,000 miles on working towboats and came to know the Mississippi like few other women ever have.
In this expansive book, Virginia traces the human history of this great river, following the stories of failure and success by those who came before her. She tells the tales of mammoth hunters and Spanish conquerors, French paddlers and bird painters — and obsessed explorers finding (or not) the river’s source. Here too are vibrant stories of Lafitte the pirate and Blackhawk the warrior. There are flatboats and keelboats; steamboats and towboats—and the U. S. Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard come to begin a lifetime task of taming the river. There’s even a personal chapter about one of her river trips on a working towboat carrying acres of gasoline that looses control and plows into the river’s bank as it looses gasoline and turns the river red.
In her splendid book, Virginia S. Eifert tells many dramatic and moving stories of the river’s people. She has searched deep into the Midwest’s past as well as into its exciting present to interpret in a unique manner the fascinating, compelling personality that is the Mississippi River.
For this Kindle Edition, there are additional photos taken by the author in the 1950’s and found later after her death and add a personal note to this book about the greatest river in America.
This vivid 240-page biography of the great American woodsman and explorer, Louis Jolliet, is presented in the many aspects of his remarkable life, and skillfully told by the award-winning Mid-western author, Virginia S. Eifert. Two memorial collections of Eifert’s work attest to the brilliance of her writing skills, and that is not lost in this book. It reads like a grand adventure, which in real life it certainly was. First published in 1961 and illustrated with maps of Jolliet’s world, it is now back in print here after the 50th anniversary of its first edition.
Hold on to your hat, take a canoe paddle in your hands and join Jolliet in a grand adventure.
• With support materials including an original first edition dust jacket
• Original letters to the author from the illustrator, Thomas Hart Benton, distinguished American painter.
• Comments on the letters by the publisher.
• Eifert invitation to the celebrated Mark Twain Society
• Photos of this treasure trove of materials in it’s original binder.
• Photo of Virginia Eifert interview on KSHL radio in 1954 showing the same dust jacket and the original binder.
In the spring of 1831, after the Lincoln family had survived the ”Winter of the Deep Snow”, young Abe Lincoln was more than willing to accept an offer to pilot a flatboat full of produce down three rivers of middle America, from Sangamo Town, Illinois to the roaring city of New Orleans. Although others went along, it was Abe Lincoln who planned everything, made the important decisions and avoided danger or fought it down all along the way.
By VIRGINIA S. EIFERT
First published in 1963, rewritten and content added in 2013.
Illustrated with 40 photographs and 78 drawings and maps by the author.
Nature writing at its best by one of the Midwest’s finest! Set in the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin—a narrow, tapering, ninety miles long finger of rock, sand and forest thrusting northward between Lake Michigan and Green Bay. Here are rugged bluffs, dunes, ridges, beaches, woods, and cherry orchards. It is a magical area for the naturalist, varied and unique, particularly in the Ridges sanctuary where the splendid wildflowers have drawn botanists from many parts of the world. Written in the 1960’s, this is a vivid and passionate exploration of a beautiful landscape still entrusted to some of the original homesteaders and fishermen – before tourists found this singular place.
