The United States has a tradition of conscientious objectors stretching back to Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Steve McQuiddy's fascinating Here on the Ledge uncovers the story of a talented group of men who resisted military enlistment during World War II, serving in a civilian service camp on the Oregon coast instead.
Their duties, six days a week, for no pay, focused on tree planting, road building and firefighting. One of the conscientious objectors, poet Bill Everson (aka Brother Antonius), penned "Here on the Edge" in March 1943, for the camp's alternative paper. He wrote that they were biding their time "when what we are, and that for which we have taken this stand, can be tangent again to the world." They had no idea, McQuiddy says, "how their words and actions would resonate far beyond the borders of this backwoods camp."
During the evenings, the "Fine Arts Group of Waldport" published books, produced plays and made art and music. Their members included William Eshelman, future president of Scarecrow Press; Kermit Skeets, co-founder of Centaur Press; and Adrian Wilson, founder of San Francisco's the Press in Tuscany Alley. The West Coast sensibility that emerged from the camp later helped shape the Beat Generation.
Illustrated with rare photos and drawings, Here on the Edge is a significant cultural history of a group who chose art over war, a "concentration of energy, a convergence of thought and action, a creative intensity... that was rare and perhaps unique." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher