The River

Staff Pick!

Heller writes the BEST novels in natural settings. He is known for his long form pieces for magazines like Outside and has traveled the natural world and written about it extensively. In this novel, two best friends and college students, set out on a canoe trip on the Maskwa River in the wilds of northern Canada, and they experience all sorts of unexpected turmoil while on what they thought would be a peaceful float.  -- Kathleen

Description

EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE

 

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

 

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE OBSERVER (LONDON) - KIRKUS REVIEWS

 

Wynn and Jack have been best friends since college orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey.

 

One night, with the fire advancing, they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank; the next day, a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the same man they heard? And if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.