Untamed The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island - Will Harlan

Author: Will Harlan

Publisher: Grove Press, 2014

Pages: 301

Dimensions: ± 23.5 cm x 15.5 cm

Hardcover with dustjacket. Very good condition. Binding intact. Clean, neat copy. Owner name and date / years on second blank page.

Untamed tells the thought-provoking and occasionally tragic story of Carol Ruckdeschel, who has spent much of her life living on and fighting to protect Georgias Cumberland Island and its creatures.

Carol Ruckdeschel is the wildest woman in America. She eats road kill, wrestles alligators, rides horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built herself in an island wilderness. Shes had three husbands and many lovers, one of whom she shot and killed in self-defense. A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia.

As a child, Ruckdeschel loved creeks, woods and all the critters in them. She once took a 2-foot snapping turtle home and hid it in the bathtub for a week and got a whipping.

She learned to collect and eat roadkill, took in a baby bobcat and baffled and attracted men with her combination of natural beauty and tomboy toughness.