The river, by Peter Heller

This short book will seize you like the whitewater rapids it chronicles and propel you through it at breakneck speed.  Jack and Wynn are best friends who met at Dartmouth.  Jack grew up on a ranch out west, Wynn in rural New England, and they share a love of adventure, exploration, and the natural world.  Unlike the more clueless men in Deliverance, which one cannot help but being reminded of, the two college juniors have a deep knowledge of survival in the wilderness, are gifted fly fishermen, and, in Jack’s case, a born hunter.  They set off on a two-week canoe trip north towards Hudson Bay deep in the Canadian wilderness in late August.  So confident of their skills and careful preparation of supplies are they that they put a little more spice into the adventure by distaining to take a satellite phone with them.  Several days out, as they begin to approach the more challenging parts of the river, they run into a pair of drunks camping along the river and later, as they paddle past another encampment, hear sounds of a quarrel between a man and a woman.  However, it is the natural world that worries them at first – they have spotted signs of a massive wildfire on the horizon and know that they must pick up speed to outrun it.  The real problem will turn out to be human. Lyrical descriptions of fishing, observing birds, and savoring sleeping under the Milky Way will give way to violence, from both nature and man, and a decision that will change lives.  Intense.  253 pp.