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Title details for Riverman by Ben McGrath - Wait list

Riverman

An American Odyssey

by Ben McGrath
Adam Verner
Audiobook
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“This quietly profound book belongs on the shelf next to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.” —The New York Times
 
The riveting true story of Dick Conant, an American folk hero who, over the course of more than twenty years, canoed solo thousands of miles of American rivers—and then disappeared near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This book “contains everything: adventure, mystery, travelogue, and unforgettable characters” (David Grann, best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).
For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage. At the same time, Conant collected people wherever he went, creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting.

Ben McGrath, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was one of those people. In 2014 he met Conant by chance just north of New York City as Conant paddled down the Hudson, headed for Florida. McGrath wrote a widely read article about their encounter, and when Conant's canoe washed up a few months later, without any sign of his body, McGrath set out to find the people whose lives Conant had touched—to capture a remarkable life lived far outside the staid confines of modern existence.
 
Riverman is a moving portrait of a complex and fascinating man who was as troubled as he was charismatic, who struggled with mental illness and self-doubt, and was ultimately unable to fashion a stable life for himself; who traveled alone and yet thrived on connection and brought countless people together in his wake. It is also a portrait of an America we rarely see: a nation of unconventional characters, small river towns, and long-forgotten waterways.
 

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 5, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781524722012
      • File size: 247930 KB
      • Duration: 08:36:31

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Adam Verner narrates in a plainspoken way that allows this mysterious and mesmerizing audiobook to wash over the listener. He choses a deliberate pace and storyteller's style that suits this tale of water wanderlust. This is the biography of Dick Conant, a giant of a man who paddled an overloaded red plastic canoe down the Mississippi, the Hudson, and the Yellowstone Rivers--alone. Author McGrath met the loquacious Conant accidentally, was moved by his larger-than-life story, and wrote about him. In 2014, he was contacted by North Carolina authorities who discovered McGrath's card among Conant's belongings after his canoe was found overturned and abandoned in North Carolina's Great Dismal Swamp area. Fine travel writing and mystery make a riveting listen. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 17, 2022
      New Yorker staff writer McGrath debuts with the mostly riveting though sometimes meandering story of his search for a solo traveler and canoeing enthusiast who went missing in 2014. The author met Dick Conant shortly before his disappearance and wrote a story about the itinerant “river wanderer” who, at the time, was traveling by canoe from Canada to Florida. After Conant disappeared in North Carolina, McGrath set out to find him and learn about his life, the quest taking him to meet Conant’s brothers, who supplied him with Conant’s journals, from which he learns of Conant’s time in the mountains of Tennessee and in Bozeman, Mont.—in the end, McGrath writes, “I have tried here to make Conant the hero of his own epic, while not giving anyone the illusion that it was an enviable life.” McGrath is strongest when describing his own investigative work—his vivid descriptions of the places he visits and the people he meets hum with life, and he offers fascinating insight into the craft of writing a story about an elusive subject. His language sometimes tends toward the grandiose (Conant is “a Studs Terkel of the riverbank,” with “a touch of Whitman in his eclectic erudition”), but those with a soft spot for accounts of rugged individualism will be enchanted.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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