2015 IPPY Silver Medalist, Best Mid-Atlantic Nonfiction Twice the size of Central Park, Rock Creek Park is the wild, wooded heart of Washington, DC, offering refuge from a frantic city pace to millions of visitors each year. Rock Creek Valley, which serves as the spine of the national park, has a long and storied history--from Amerindians who fished the creek, hunted the woods, and quarried the rock outcroppings, to Euro-Americans' claims on the land as mill sites, to widespread deforestation during the American Civil War, to its ecological restoration and designation as a federal park in 1890. Melanie Choukas-Bradley, renowned naturalist and writer, spent a year in Rock Creek Park walking and skiing its trails at all times of day, observing and recording natural events in all seasons and weather conditions. Enhanced by the evocative photographs of Susan Austin Roth, A Year in Rock Creek Park takes readers on an incredible and unforgettable journey. Distributed for George F. Thompson Publishing (www.gftbooks.com)