Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia.
Here Mcphee uses his uncanny skills as a journalist to explore the history of the region and describe the people--and their distinctive folklore--who call it home..
The few people who dwell in the region, the Pineys, are little known and often misunderstood.
Although New Jersey has the heaviest population density of any state, huge segments of the Pine Barrens remain uninhabited.
On all sides, however, developments of one kind or another have gradually moved in, so that now the central and integral forest is reduced to about a thousand square miles.
The term refers to the predominant trees in the vast forests that cover the area and to the quality of the soils below, which are too sandy and acid to be good for farming.
Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks, which has been known since the seventeenth century as the Pine Barrens.
Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia
