NONFICTION: Ben McGrath reads the water to write about a modern-day American voyageur who paddled the rivers from Montana to the Atlantic Ocean.
"Riverman: An American Odyssey" by Ben McGrath; Alfred A. Knopf (272 pages, $29)
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In his fascinating "Riverman," Ben McGrath tells the story of an American wanderer, Dick Conant, who canoed thousands of miles of American rivers before he vanished in North Carolina in 2014. As McGrath travels to the places Conant tied up his boat, he meets locals whose encounters with the man shed light on Conant's adventurous spirit. The glimpses of McGrath's life makes the book into a diptych depicting American manhood.
The story begins with a chance encounter with Dick Conant in 2014, when McGrath saw an unknown boat lashed close to his home on the Hudson River. Conant was inside a neighbor's home telling stories to those who had gathered. McGrath describes Conant as a "stranger" to the 21st century, commenting that the man was dressed in "denim overalls, a faded baseball cap, and muddy brown boots, and had a patchy, rust-colored beard."
It's a moment near the beginning that lets readers know that McGrath is bringing his own more urban vision of 21st-century America into his work; Conant's story becomes a means for McGrath to push against the boundaries of his life. Successful as a New Yorker writer, he is discontent as a "man stuck at home with a newborn and a toddler and a view of a storied river out the window."
McGrath is drawn further into the riverman's life when he's contacted by officials who have found his business card in the missing man's belongings. While searchers cover the waters of Albemarle Sound looking for Conant, McGrath begins his own journey to learn more about the life of a man who had spent years on the waterways.
In small town after small town, he hears residents' stories of an entertaining raconteur. Conant was well-read, and frequently wrote in his journals about what he had learned, along with his impressions of where he had been on any given day. Family members contact McGrath after the appearance of his first New Yorker story, and the siblings' childhood memories provide grist for the narrative. But in Montana, where Conant lived, McGrath discovers women librarians who resorted to banning Conant from the library for violent acts.
"Riverman" is rich with detail about small-town America, those little communities that have made their livings off the commerce generated by waterways. Embedded in the narrative, however, are multiple anecdotes about the ways that class intersects with the picture. Conant was not a recreational boater equipped with the latest high-tech expensive gadgets and gear. He carried his life on his boat, and at times it doesn't appear different from those whose entire life stories are contained within shopping carts.
But unspoken in McGrath's story are issues of race and gender. I'm a woman who has spent much of her life participating in outdoor recreation; it is hard to imagine how less free a woman or a person of color would be to show up in town after town as a lone traveler.
For men like Conant, the domestic life, the settled life, was impossible. And despite his own success, one senses that McGrath, too, wishes to feel the freedom he sees in Conant's itinerant journey. What emerges is a story that wends its way through the fluid state of American masculinity in our tumultuous times.
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Lorraine Berry is a writer in Oregon.
