The thrilling story of a female whitewater guide working on some of the most challenging and remote rafting rivers in North America, from Northern British Columbia to the Grand Canyon and beyond. When Tamar Glouberman was in her twenties and thirties, rivers were flowing through every aspect of her life.Whitewater and the paddling community bring excitement, friendships, lovers and a connection to the natural world as she traverses the map in search of her next adventure. As a short woman who nearly failed high-school gym, Glouberman does not fit the stereotype of a kayaker or raft guide and must prove herself time and again. Yet she feels more at home on water than land. Driven to guide increasingly dangerous rivers, Tamar overcomes her self doubts and challenges both on and off the water, using a combination of grit and wit. But when a rafting trip ends in a fatal accident, she is consumed by guilt and exiles herself from the rivers she loves, convinced she can never return. Tamar must eventually decide if being unable to save her passenger’s life means she also must sacrifice her own. A raw and honest work from a talented new voice in adventure writing, Tamar’s memoir is a page-turner, transporting readers through wild rapids and breathtaking canyons, navigating eddies and currents, as she learns from the river that finding self-forgiveness might be the most hard-to-reach destination of all.
In the third novel in nationally bestselling author K.A. Tucker’s romantic suspense series, a young woman travels to Dublin and finds herself at the scene of a crime—and falling for the guy who saves her. Armed with two years’ worth of savings and the need to experience life outside the bubble of her Oregon small town, twenty-five-year old Amber Welles is prepared for anything. Except dying in Dublin. Had it not been for the bravery of a stranger, she might have. But he takes off before she has the chance to offer her gratitude. Twenty-four-year-old River Delaney is rattled. No one was supposed to get hurt. But then that American tourist showed up. He couldn’t let her die, but he also can’t be identified at the scene—so, he fled. Back to his everyday life of running his family’s pub. Only, everyday life is getting more and more complicated, thanks to his brother, Aengus, and his criminal associations. When the American girl tracks River down, he quickly realizes how much he likes her, how wrong she is for him. And how dangerous it is to have her around. Pushing her away would be the smart move. Maybe it’s because he saved her life, or maybe it’s because he’s completely different from everything she’s left behind, but Amber finds herself chasing after River Delaney. Amber isn’t the kind of girl to chase after anyone. And River isn’t the kind of guy she’d want to catch.
After a brief introduction to meditation, in a course conducted by the Art of Living Foundation, Tara sets out on a journey to understand God and achieve Nirvana. Following the footsteps of spiritual leaders, Tara travels extensively across India, chasing river sources and holy places. In her travels, Tara gets to learn about the political, religious and cultural history of India. Tara gains a deep sense of pride in India as a country. Tara also practices Vipassana meditation, regularly and starts reading the Bhagavad Gita. In due course, she loses her baggage of disappointments and expectations, and arrives at convincing answers about God and Moksha.
When I see and hear the ubiquitous hype and media coverage for celebrities receiving acclaim after facing their ordeals with breast cancer, I hear words like "bravery," "stamina," "devastating disease," how well they are handling the diagnosis, and how "heroically" they are getting on with their lives." Most of these same celebrities are alive and well after their diagnosis because of the work done by women like my late wife, Lois A. Anderson. Yet most people have never heard of her. If you want to read a book about real bravery, real stamina, and the power to make real changes that matter to the breast cancer story, you need to take the time to read this book. Lois came from a poor family, coming from conditions most of us would never ascend from, and made her mark upon the world. "I do not want to be forgotten," she told me after being diagnosed with stage III breast cancer at the age of thirty-nine. She lived eighteen years after that diagnosis and, in many ways, changed the world with her knowledge, support, and political advocacy. Many throw money at research in an effort to move breast cancer out of the ranks of an incurable cancer into one where most will survive it. Lois didn't have money. She didn't have the media to tell of her many battles. What she did have was a spirit of hope, which she used to battle breast cancer on all fronts. This is the story of a remarkable woman who, in spite of the odds, not only survived but also turned an ordeal that would have devastated most of us into a shining example of what one person can do even when they are facing death. "Sometimes you get the chance to change things," she often told me. In her short lifetime, even with cancer raging through her body, she took the chance and did that very thing. She not only fought her own personal battle with breast cancer but also fought the war against it. Lois pursued such an astonishing life from the moment she came into the world, overcoming many obstacles in her quest to rise above the ordinary, many conquered before breast cancer entered her life. I felt her story had to be told. She lived her short life, coming from very humble beginnings, rising from all of it, making changes she hoped would better everyone, when it ended on January 17, 2011. At the time of her death, she was considered a great breast cancer advocate known at the national level. She was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer at the age of thirty-nine, six days before her fortieth birthday, in 1992. Signs that could have cautioned her remained muted by an unsuspicious bruise she sustained from an injury several months before her fortieth birthday. In time, she was treated for the initial breast cancer and remained cancer-free for almost ten years, until cancer returned in 2001. Then when the odds seemed stacked against her, she fought the disease as a stage IV breast cancer survivor (metastatic breast cancer) from the time of that dire discovery until she died in January 2011. She lived eighteen years from the time she was diagnosed, against all prognostications allowing her only five years of survival. Over the last six months of her life, I began writing a story where I escaped the realities of losing my wife to something I had no control over. In a way, it transitioned into a metaphoric fable, a parallel story of her life. Between the lines, I allowed myself the chance to create an alternate world where the real trials Lois and I experienced on our "last road" together eventually made some sense to me in our unpredictable world. After she died, I began the long process of chronicling her amazing biography and believed I could finish the fictional one. Both stories represent a process of coming to terms with her death and a promise I made to "not let her be forgotten." I began writing her real life story in late February 2011. After I started, I found stories and journals Lois had written about herself tucked away in boxes and old folders throughout the house. Some o
From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
