Reading a book can change your life. When Eleanor Lahr read "Follow the River", a novel about the true experience of Mary Draper Ingles, who was captured in 1755 by Shawnee Indians and carried 500 miles from her home, she felt inexplicably compelled to retrace Mary's escape route. With little previous experince, but with plucky courage, she planned and trained extensively, then set off on her 51st birthday. Before e-mail, cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter, occaisionally alone, usually with strangers, she hiked 43 days along the Ohio, Kanawha, and New Rivers--publisher.
If you're a fan of adventure and expedition stories, you'll know that most books in this genre focus on the expedition itself-the action, the struggles, the joys, the heartbreaks, the lessons, the rewards. But what about the events that happen prior to an expedition-the planning, the organizing, the logistics, the endless research, the pleas to prospective sponsors, the correspondence between team members? Most books in the adventure travel genre spend less than a chapter explaining "what came before." This book, however, is not like most. River Angels takes readers behind the scenes for a candid look at the simultaneous organization of three self-propelled expeditions and introduces the world to a burgeoning network of altruistic "river angels"-riverside citizens who not only assist long-distance paddlers, but also help preserve and promote the rivers they love.
Reflections on race, environment, politics, and living on the front lines of change In Angels by the River, James Gustave "Gus" Speth recounts his unlikely path from a southern boyhood through his years as one of the nation's most influential mainstream environmentalists and eventually to the system-changing activism that shapes his current work. Born and raised in an idyllic but racially divided town that later became the scene of South Carolina's horrific Orangeburg Massacre, Speth explores how the civil rights movement and the South's agrarian roots shaped his later work in the heyday of the environmental movement, when he founded two landmark environmental groups, fought for the nation's toughest environmental laws, spearheaded programs in the United Nations, advised the White House, and moved into a leading academic role as dean of Yale's prestigious School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Yet, in the end, he arrived somewhere quite unexpected-still believing change is possible, but not within the current political and economic system. Throughout this compelling memoir, Speth intertwines three stories-his own, his hometown's, and his country's-focusing mainly on his early years and the lessons he drew from them, and his later years, in which he comes full circle in applying those lessons. In the process he invites others to join him politically at or near the place at which he has arrived, wherever they may have started.
Many citizens of Ambient, Wisconsin, believe the old tales of an angel living in the Onion River that runs through the heart of their town. So when Gabriel Carpenter vanishes one night at the river's edge after being accosted by troublesome teenagers, he is presumed drowned. Yet the teenagers all tell a different and conflicting story, and when Gabriels lifeless body is found in a barn a mile away no one in this quiet Midwestern community can agree whether a miracle or a hoax has occurred. But as the story spreads, and curious tourists overrun the town - some skeptical, others reverent, still others angling for financial gain - one fact becomes certain beyond any doubt: life here will never be the same.
The West was a place where dreams could come true, and in this epic novel Alejandro Morales introduces two very different families and an unpredictable river to explore the allure of Southern California and the development of Los Angeles. Although the Rivers and Kellers families come from different backgrounds—ethnic, class and linguistic—their lives and fortunes become inextricably linked through their children. An illicit love affair leads to tragedy as the families are victims of racism and the pseudo-scientific philosophy of eugenics, or selective breeding, proposed by those fearful of Los Angeles’ diverse population in the 1920s. River of Angels is a richly detailed look at the people who lived on both sides of the river that separated the haves from the have-nots, from the mystical and forgotten Native Americans and their mixed-blood Latino descendants to the opportunity-seeking Yankees and the African, Mexican and Asian migrants. Acclaimed novelist Alejandro Morales excavates the layered history of Los Angeles in this stirring epic of love, loss and redemption.
Welcome back to Virgin River with the books that started it all… Four years ago, air force sweethearts Franci Duncan and Sean Riordan reached an impasse. She wanted marriage and a family. He didn't. But a chance meeting proves that the bitter breakup hasn't cooled their sizzling chemistry. Sean has settled down in spite of himself—he's not the cocky young fighter pilot he was when Franci left, and he wants them to try again. After all, they have a history…but that's not all they share. Franci's secret reason for walking away when Sean refused to commit is now three and a half: a redheaded cherub named Rosie who shares her daddy's emerald-green eyes. Sean is stunned—and furious with Franci for the deception. News travels fast in Virgin River, and soon the whole town is taking sides. Rebuilding their trust could take a small miracle—and the kind of love that can move mountains. Look for What We Find by Robyn Carr, a powerful story of healing, new beginnings and one woman's journey to finding the happiness she's long been missing. Order your copy today!
My parents forgot something when they ran... me. After scamming most of our town out of their life savings, my folks disappeared in the middle of the night. Forced to take me in, my estranged aunt and uncle shipped me off to Raven River Academy the first chance they got. In my town, the line between the haves and the have-nots is actually a twelve-foot gate that keep the unwanted where they belong. Nothing could unite the two factions until I set foot on campus. For the first time in our history, they all agree on one thing: I must pay for my father's sins. But why should I care? The joke is on them because I have nothing left inside. No part of me that isn't already broken. I invite them to do their worst. Until The Angels enter the game. The most dangerous gang in town has a score to settle with my family, and Cassius, Clay, Hiro, and Royal are here to collect. Raven River soon becomes a battleground of lies, deceit, and violence, and I stand at the heart of it. The gorgeous otherworldly Angels will remind me that there is one thing left that I care about... and they'll destroy it in heavenly fire. The Angels is a reverse harem high school bully romance. This is book one in the series and features language, dark themes, and sexual scenes. If you're cool with that, dive in!
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A fiery tour de force... I could not put this book down. It truly was terrifying and unutterably beautiful." -Alison Borden, The Denver Post From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman 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. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the 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.
The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the story of the largest public water project ever created—William Mulholland’s Los Angeles aqueduct—a story of Gilded Age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man who's vision shaped the future and continues to impact us today. In 1907, Irish immigrant William Mulholland conceived and built one of the greatest civil engineering feats in history: the aqueduct that carried water 223 miles from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Los Angeles—allowing this small, resource-challenged desert city to grow into a modern global metropolis. Drawing on new research, Les Standiford vividly captures the larger-then-life engineer and the breathtaking scope of his six-year, $23 million project that would transform a region, a state, and a nation at the dawn of its greatest century. With energy and colorful detail, Water to the Angels brings to life the personalities, politics, and power—including bribery, deception, force, and bicoastal financial warfare—behind this dramatic event. At a time when the importance of water is being recognized as never before—considered by many experts to be the essential resource of the twenty-first century—Water to the Angels brings into focus the vigor of a fabled era, the might of a larger than life individual, and the scale of a priceless construction project, and sheds critical light on a past that offers insights for our future. Water to the Angels includes 8 pages of photographs.
In this sequel to Only the River Runs Free, Joseph Connor Burke has reclaimed his ancestral acres, but his dreams of a peaceable kingdom are shattered by violence and betrayal. Will he stand for what he truly believes?
