Somewhere, In Between: Seeking the Rapture and Exploring the People, Places, and History of the Lower Mississippi River Valley and Beyond

Somewhere, In Between is a book for people who want to explore and think and enjoy a good story. Inspired by the people and places along the banks of the Mighty Mississippi between Cairo, Illinois, and New Orleans, the compelling photographs and essays contained within are further inspired by a curiosity about land and life and the all-encompassing tides of time and change, chaos and order in which we all live, suspended in reflection and projection, no matter where we call home. As shown in these pages, the Lower Mississippi River Valley is a place of great beauty and a unique, exotic culture. This is the southern end of the Heartland of America and the birthplace of the blues, America’s most unique form of musical expression. That said, folks don’t call it the blues for nothing: The Valley is also a complicated place with a dark history, where the legacy of slavery and conquest continues to unwind even to this day and where the effects of poverty and hardship are readily evident. It is a world in transition between a storied past and an uncertain future. Like the author’s Sin Sombras/Without Shadows, Somewhere, In Between is a search not only for meaning and cohesion amidst the certain uncertainty of daily life, but the ultimate experience at the end of the book: the Rapture—awe of almost unbearable intensity, possible only when one is simultaneously aware of both the horror and magnificence of creation. As the Mississippi River flows in between the East and West Coasts of the United States, so, too, do we strive to live in balance between the world as it is and the way we wish it was and between the reality of who we are versus who we would like to be.

About the Author :
James Barbee, M.D., has been an avid photographer since the age of twenty-one. A psychiatrist by training, he became Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Neuroscience before entering private practice in 2009 and is currently Professor of Pharmacology and Neuroscience at the LSU Behavioral Science Center in New Orleans, where he was named the George C. Dunn Professor of Psychiatry in 2001. Barbee has lived in Miami, St. Louis, and San Diego before finally settling in New Orleans, and he credits the lessons learned from each of the places he has lived, as well as the experiences in his personal life and work with patients over many years, as being powerful formative influences upon him and a source of boundless inspiration for his creative work. His photographs have been displayed in juried exhibitions, and his previously published book is Sin Sombras/Without Shadows: A Search for the Meaning of life if There is one, in the California Desert in Photographs and Stories (George F. Thompson Publishing, 2018).