The River - Peter Heller

The River

By Peter Heller

  • Release Date: 2019-03-05
  • Genre: Action & Adventure
Score: 4
4
From 625 Ratings

Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the author of The Guide and The Dog Stars comes the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip—a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence.

"A fiery tour de force … I could not put this book down. It truly was terrifying and unutterably beautiful."—The Denver Post

Wynn and Jack have been best friends since college 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.

One night, with the fire advancing, they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank; the next day, a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the same 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.

Look for Peter Heller's new novel, The Last Ranger, coming soon!

Reviews

  • As ever, simply beautiful...

    5
    By Red-headed Witch
    Peter Heller is a writer of extraordinary talent, & The River is no exception to his ability to spin tales that are beautiful, engaging, sad & vivid in the descriptions of the land in which the story takes place. This tale of best friends on a summer canoe trip will leave you with a hundred questions... questions that after a while, you’ll realize you don’t actually want answered, because Mr. Heller has done his work well-your own imagination provides a better response than any ‘tie it up with a bow’ epilogue.
  • What a waste of $$$$$$

    1
    By Handakina
    Who was this book written for? 8th graders? Horrible writing, weak characters, and terrible story line. What a waste of $$$$$$$$
  • Read it in one day

    5
    By cbaymiller
    Never done this before, but I read this entire book in one day. From the first page, I absolutely couldn’t put it down. My heart was invested immediately. You get emotionally connected with the characters right from the get-go. Man, great read.
  • 🔥

    5
    By Medium-Sized-Reader
    It starts off as a quiet and smart novel and then picks up to the point where you can’t put it down! I read the majority of it in 2 sittings.
  • Good read with a few irritating flaws.

    3
    By filmguyryan
    The story held my interest and kept me coming back for more. Unfortunately there were a few elements that bumped me often enough to keep pulling me out of the world of the two main characters. First, the author has a background in poetry and while at times the meandering description of the wilderness was beautiful, more often than not it made for a disjointed and choppy reading experience. Particularly in the sections of the book where the action happens quickly and should pull you through to as fast as you can read them. The technical sentence structure, with its free form and poetic style meant I had to re-read sections more often that I’d like to decipher the text. I also found the protagonists un-relatable in an obnoxious way. These are men of humble upbringings who speak like farm hands and are constantly chewing dip, however they have Ivy League degrees and are great literary scholars? The attempt to give them definition and complexity felt forced and stilted. I found myself glossing over the sections dealing with their backstories more than I should’ve. I just didn’t feel any connection with either of them. Overall I felt like the idea behind the story arc was compelling and all of the pieces were there, but the execution and payoff at the end left me feeling incomplete.

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