by Rinker Buck
I was sorry to hurry through the end chapters, on account of the book needing to go back to the library, but I probably would have hurried anyway. His descriptions of dodging (or getting stuck on) sandbars and tows and barges on the lower Mississippi were riveting. Impossible to stop midway.
He didn't do a lot of eulogizing at the end, either. He'd done all that earlier, mixed in with the travel or during his frequent one- or two-week breaks at towns or tie-ups along the way. It fit the time and place when he introduced it, very nicely I believe.
And now I wish the book was longer. I'd read his Oregon Trail book and liked it pretty well but not to the enraptured state this one put me into. It was partly historical descriptions of flatboating and how it grew America; partly humanity he met and traveled with along the way; and part riveting adventure. And an awful lot about reading the river and constructing anchors and other boating requirements.
And incidentally, a little about debunking myths. Having grown up alongside the Ohio, I'd often wandered why more people didn't take boats out on the river for pleasure or fishing. Some did, and more do now, but the general conception of the Ohio and especially the Miss. is that they're dangerously full of whirlpools and waves thrown up by tugboats and sandbars and hidden trees (sawyers) in the channel. Mr. Buck was told over and over again of the many and hideous ways he would sink his boat and die a gruesome death.
No spoilers here, other than that knowing he lived to write the book gives away that plot twist....
Or did he...?
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