All in One River :
Falls Dam to Pamlico Sound
--Interviewing the Neuse River
by Ben Casey
$25.00 paperback, 96 pages
Published: November 2002
ISBN 1880849-51-8

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All in One River shares with its readers author Ben Casey's extended meditation, in photographs and prose, on the delicate, multifaceted relationship between nature and humankind.

Casey's immediate subject is North Carolina's Neuse River, the length of which he travels—by means of canoe, jon boat, skiff, and sailboat-through the eastern third of the state. His "interview" reminds readers that the Neuse, and indeed any river, ". . . should never have been a dumping ground for man's waste. It is more than a faucet for man's thirst or a theme park for water sports." But his larger subject is perhaps best reflected by the well-known quotation from Henry David Thoreau: ". . . in Wildness is the preservation of the World."

Casey uses his camera, poetic sensibility, and life-long connection with his subject to paint an intimate, loving portrait of the river's entire course, from Raleigh to Pamlico Sound. He revels in the contrasts embodied in the Neuse, from its origin as "a small rocky streambed" to its end in a miles-wide estuary, its length a highway that reveals not only the marvels of nature, but also the works—both admirable and not—of humankind.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of All in One River will be donated to support The Neuse River Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the natural beauty of the Neuse.