Neil Sampson

Apples on the Nashwaak Neil Sampson

Apples on the Nashwaak tells the stories of five generations of Irish families who called this place "home".

... a gravel road climbs to a fifty-acre field, to where blankets of paintbrush blend into sky. The Nashwaak River Valley runs far below.

The field lies deserted now, abandoned to wild roses and raspberries. Rock piles--150-year heaps--half submerged in the treeline, icebergs of the understorey.

... a straggle of old apple trees ... all that's left of a life long gone--house, barn, paddocks and sheds; gardens behind fences of cedar rail and stone.

I come here to run my dogs ... an open door to the wild, it stirs the wolf in their blood.
This field, these woodland trails ... walk them; go deep. Though feet lose their way, the mind finds the path to a settled place. The soul inhales, quiets, soars; begins to nestle in.

...what follows is free flow, a river on the run. Facts carried, facts buried--trails of truth through a field of fiction.

-from the Preface

Apples on the Nashwaak received the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick 2018 Alfred G. Bailey Award for poetry.