Author: Patricia Kyritsi Howell, approx size 9" X 6", 276 pages, pub Jan 2006, trade paperback, Nature, non-fiction. This concise guide to medicinal plants of the Southern Appalachians includes botanical descriptions of 45 native plants, their historical and current uses in herbal practice, detailed, easy-to-follow medicine making instructions and unique recipes for syrups, liniments, digestive bitters and more. The book invites the reader to explore native plants in their wild habitats and offers step-by-step ethical harvesting guidelines while emphasizing conservation issues. The author is a well-respected medical herbalist and teacher who lives in the mountains of north Georgia.  Even to peruse Howell's manual is healing, and exhilarating, not only because of the book's inherent beauty, but because it contains vital knowledge all of us will need as fossil fuels dwindle and we return to the local. "One day this book may save your life" , says Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Wild Card Quilt and Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land ".