Beach reads: two new books explore waters within sight of Mississippi shores.

HORN OF PLENTY: SEASONS IN AN ISLAND WILDERNESS By April Newlin; photographs by Donald Bradburn. Hardcover, $28. University Press of Mississippi, 800/737-7788, www.upress.state.ms.us.

April Newlin's Horn of Plenty explores how Walter Anderson's artwork inspired the author to explore for herself the remote Horn Island, one of a chain of barrier islands off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Spending days on the island at a time was a monumental effort for Newlin, a freelance nature writer and psychotherapist who was forced to rearrange her life to accommodate two years of trips to Horn. She studied notes from Anderson's journals to learn more about what drew the artist to leave his family to live here. Throughout the book, quotes from Anderson's writings reflect his love for the natural world, which he felt was best exemplified by his surroundings on Horn Island.

The book isn't all dreamy artistic speculation--Newlin studied the flora and fauna of the island closely, visiting research facilities on the coast for a fuller understanding the ecology of Horn and its sister islands. Extensive discussions of sea grasses, water creatures, alligators, and sea birds add to Newlin's narrative of her island visits.

The roles of erosion, weather conditions, and human action in the evolution of the island chain all get their due as well--particularly in a passage discussing the charred appearance of Horn Island on one of her last trips. "Horn might have burned naturally. The cause of the fire makes a difference. If it is natural, we can integrate the loss, accept the change as part of an island's life cycle, but a human-caused event would be catastrophic, not part of the land's natural evolution. We feel torn between rage and acceptance," Newlin writes.

She also tells of encounters with blackbirds, turtles, mosquitoes, and storms while camping around the island. We read about the Empire, where American bald eagles nest; the Interior, a hidden area in the center of the island; the Flats, closed six months of the year as an osprey nesting ground; and the Chimney, a remnant of a long-gone U.S. military bioweapon facility.

The book ends as Newlin's boat speeds away one last time to bring her back to mainland Mississippi. She writes of a new appreciation of Anderson's art, now that she has seen its setting for herself: "Before that initial visit to the island, I'd been anxious that his watercolors might be the vagaries of a madman. He must have taken liberties, exaggerated for effect ... There it was, the blue sand of an Anderson landscape, the unreal blue of imagination, the coherent blue of realization."

ON ISLAND TIME: KAYAKING THE CARIBBEAN By Scott B. Williams. Hardcover, $50; paperback, $20. University Press of Mississippi, 800/737-7788, www.upress.state.ms.us.

Scott Williams of Brandon set sail on south Mississippi's Black Creek in a fully stocked sea kayak that, along with $3,500 in cash and traveler's checks, represented his total net worth after selling his car, winter clothing, and other miscellany of modern life. "I was determined not to let money, or the lack of it, enter my thoughts for a long time," Williams writes in On Island Time. "Though I was only 25 at the time, I was already disillusioned with the pursuit of money and the material things it could buy."

So Williams studied charts, guidebooks, and stories of kayak adventuring, convincing himself it was possible to kayak through the Caribbean Sea all the way to South America. His kayak carried everything from a desalinator and packets of Benadryl tablets to preserved food and fish-catching equipment.

Along the way, Williams discovered the limits of his preparations--studying wind effects is a lot different from paddling a kayak through the winds at Current Cut. Yet even before he was halfway through the first leg of the trip, he knew he was on the right course: "I wanted to continue living close to nature, to wake up each day and watch the sun rising out of the sea, and to sleep and eat whenever I was tired or hungry. I couldn't imagine going back to the 9-to-5 existence I had known before," Williams writes.

He encountered a host of odd characters during his travels: yacht owners and sailors, isolated communities of islanders, and morally shaky international customs officials. Some provided unexpected help, such as the captain of the luxury yacht who offered gourmet meals and a hot shower in exchange for filming his account of his trip thus far. Although the elements and a dwindling supply of cash and equipment conspired to send Williams home halfway through the trip, he instead took a summer to earn money to replace essential gear and flew back to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to pick up his kayak and continue.

Strangers Williams encountered in the Caribbean were incredulous when he told them he had paddled all the way from Mississippi, and more than a few flatly refused to believe it. But a strong independent streak enabled him to endure the long separations from civilization, the grueling paddling, and the dangers--his craft was buffeted by waves, rammed by sharks, and swamped in rough crossings. Ultimately, the trip became a metaphor for another theme, celebrating Williams' incredible efforts to remove himself from the complexities of civilization.