The dusty, dirty, nearly torn-to-shreds, beat-to-death book of adventures you'd pull out of your satchel while crossing the open prairie by wagon train. Or, before and after work on the seven train. History is a trail of unexpected minutia and unfamiliar people you're ill-prepared to meet. Very far away, but everybody is traveling the same speed. Inspired by the Americana of James Fenimore Cooper and Charles Portis, writers who rendered the gritty, immersive realism of characters driven by urgency, traversing open country. Mythology floods in on its own. Maybe a touch of the quizzically plausible Terry Gilliam. Out on the river, guts and perseverance stay the course. Downriver, the destination.
BOATS ON A RIVER
Newly elected to the present-day Congress, Representative Franklin Knight is a dapper gentleman, perhaps a bit cantankerous, a dreamer who has decided a cross-country press tour might be the best strategy to impress when he arrives in Washington. Knight considers a pit stop at one of America's great rivers might provide an enlightening experience, and why not? The twelve-year-old son of the Winnebago's driver-a kid from Southern California-is enlisted to accompany Knight to the river's edge. Not unexpectedly, Knight suffers a mild episode of his chronically annoying heart condition. With a bit of luck, a small boat appears and will take them to get medical attention. Soon enough, the men in the boat reveal a perplexing contradiction in time, and the gritty adventure begins. Knight and the boy are swept into extraordinary encounters, often violent scenarios, and cathartic moments when alliances become an imperative. By now, a party of frontiersmen, determined to continue downriver, they encounter increasingly eccentric indigenous adversaries as well as European outsiders involved in their own remarkable situations. The escalating events on the river accelerate the imperative to resolve the predicament, along with the puzzle.
Every history is a story, always told for the first time.
