Riverman - Ben McGrath

‘Brilliant, clear, and humane’ Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love‘Miraculous and hopeful’ Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here‘Quietly profound … belongs on the shelf next to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild’ New York TimesRiverman: An American Odyssey uncovers the story of an extraordinary man and his puzzling disappearance, and paints a picture of the singular spirit of America’s riverbank towns.‘The peace of mind I found, largely alone, on that white-water mecca convinced me that life was capable of exquisite pleasure and undefined meaning deep in the face of failure. The experience itself is the reward.’ Dick ConantOn his forty-third birthday, Dick Conant, a golden boy who never quite grew up as those around him expected, stepped into a homemade boat to embark on a journey despite a gathering snowstorm. Among his possessions was a Gideon Bible and biographies of Einstein and Bismark. It was the beginning of an all-consuming odyssey by an unconventional man into the watery arteries of America, a journey to the unreported margins of society. He was to spend the next twenty years canoeing thousands of miles of rivers and their innumerable smaller tributaries, from one end of the country to the other. ‘I can, and I will!’ he said. And then, in 2014, he disappeared.Not long before Conant’s upturned canoe was found in a brackish North Carolina bay, Ben McGrath met Conant by chanc
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