Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Out West Books in Grand Junction recommends books connected to the meandering topic of rivers.
Westwater Lost and Found
By Mike MilliganUtah State University Press$33.95April 2024Purchase
From the publisher: This is the continuing story of Westwater — a relatively short, deep canyon near the Utah-Colorado state line that has become one of the most popular river-running destinations in the Southwest — and its lasting significance to the study of the Upper Colorado River. Thousands of recreational river runners have pushed this backwater place into the foreground of modern popular culture in the West. Westwater represents one common sequence in western history: the late opening of unexplored territories, the sporadic and ultimately often unsuccessful attempts to develop them, their renewed obscurity when development doesn’t succeed, their attraction to a marginal society of dreamers and schemers, and the modern rediscovery of them due to new cultural motives, especially outdoor recreation, which has brought many people into thousands of remote corners of the West.
From Marya Johnston, owner: I hadn’t read the first edition of this book, so when the second edition came out and had an introduction by my long time acquaintance, river historian Roy Webb, I took it as a sign that it was time to give the book a go. I’m so glad I did.
What a great history — not only of the Westwater portion of the Colorado River, but of western Colorado and eastern Utah in general. From Utes and early mountain men who followed the Gunnison River to the Colorado and traversed Westwater Creek into northern Utah, to modern day river runners, the narrative is engrossing. Have you ever wondered about the first white men to negotiate the Gunnison River gorge? That story is here, and those guys were crazy.
What about the McCarty gang’s bank robbery in Delta? When and why did people start floating through Westwater Canyon for recreation? The portion of the book about mountain man inscriptions near us had my husband and I exploring for nearly a month for a particular signature. We found it, by golly. No trail, no wide spot in the road….we had to think like a mountain man, and were very excited when we found it. I’ve often mentioned that reading makes you explore your world, and we are certainly an example of that.
The River’s Daughter
By Bridget CrockerSpiegel & Grau$30June 2025Purchase
From the publisher: After Bridget Crocker’s parents’ volatile divorce, she moved with her mother from Southern California to Wyoming. Her life was idyllic, growing up in a trailer park on the banks of the Snake River with a stepfather she loved, a new baby brother, and the river as her companion — until her mother suddenly took up a radical new lifestyle, becoming someone Bridget barely recognized. The one constant in her life — the place Bridget felt whole and fully herself — was the river. When she discovered the world of whitewater rafting, she knew she’d found her calling.
From Marya Johnston, owner: Bridget Crocker had a difficult late childhood. Hooking up with an older river runner in her mid teens was the best thing that could have happened to her. He showed her the river and the river saved her life. Bridget’s story will tighten your chest from the first page and will have you laughing, crying, raging, and pausing with admiration. Sometimes all at the same time.
While the stories of running the Zambezi river and rivers of the west are thrilling, ultimately, this book is about a young woman fighting to shed the shackles of the past in order to become the person she was meant to be…. a strong woman who advocates for the empowerment of women in the outdoors, a woman of the river. Bridget Crocker has delivered a difficult but uplifting story with grace and honesty. This is a keeper.
Is A River Alive?
By Robert MacfarlaneW.W. Norton & Company$31.99May 2025Purchase
From the publisher: Hailed in the New York Times as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,” Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. “Is a River Alive?” is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.
Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada — imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, a stream that flows through his own life.
From Marya Johnston, owner: Yes, this is the Robert Macfarlane known for “Underland.” For me, Macfarlane is the absolute monarch of the metaphor. HIs prose is so vivid and lyrical, you will find yourself rereading passages to soak in the beauty of his writing. So, yes, rivers are alive, despite our best efforts over the last 200 years to use them as trash dumps, sewage channels, something to be exploited. I hope we think differently now. Take notice: you have fewer smashed insects on your windshield than you used to because rivers are drying up and being poisoned..
Though the Epic of Gilgamesh is relatively new to us, since cuneiform was only deciphered in the mid-19th century (please read the wonderful book, “The Mesopotamian Riddle” for more on that subject), it is the oldest known story, coming in at a mere 4,000 years old. Why am I talking about Gilgamesh? Because Macfarlane reminds us that it was written on blocks of river mud using a river reed as a writing instrument. Rivers and books. We need them both to flow freely in our lives.
THIS WEEK’S BOOK RECS COME FROM:
Out West Books
533 Main St., Grand Junction
outwestbooks.co
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