"We were afraid of its impenetrable darkness. Afraid of its
industrial smell. We were afraid of the things that lived beneath
its surface and the things that had died there. We were afraid of
spotting a hand or a head bobbing in the rafts of garbage that
floated by. We were afraid of submerged intake valves that sucked
water into the factories along the banks. We were afraid of the
river's filth. It wasn't the kind of filth that came from playing
with your friends. It was grownup filth. The kind that scared the
blue out of water and coated the riverbank with oily black goo. It
was the kind of filth you could taste, the kind that could make you
sick, maybe even kill you. We were afraid of getting splashed with
river water or of touching river rocks. We were afraid of falling
in or-God forbid-going under. We were afraid of the river's anger
at being so befouled, and afraid, most of all, of the revenge we
felt certain the river would exact."
New Jersey's Passaic River rises in a pristine wetland and ends
in a federal Superfund site. In "An American River," author and New
Jersey native Mary Bruno kayaks its length in an effort to discover
what happened to her hometown river. The Passaic's wildly
convoluted course invites detours into the river's flood-prone
natural history, New Jersey's unique geology, the corrupt practices
of the Newark chemical plant that produced Agent Orange and
poisoned the river with dioxin, and into the lives of an
unforgettable cast of characters who have lived and worked along
the Passaic and who are trying, even now, to save it. Part natural
history, part personal history, part rollicking adventure, the book
is a narrative meditation on the wonder of nature, the enduring
ties of family, and the power of water and loss. "My great
grandmother liked to say, 'Don't shit in the nest, '" writes Bruno.
"The Passaic River is an object lesson in what can happen when we
ignore that simple, salty advice."
""An American River" is an intricate and satisfying braid of
memoir, history, science, nature writing, and acute social
observation. This is an invigorating and hopeful book, and its
sense of wonder is infectious. It's not, I think, too great a
stretch to say that it holds its own on the shelf alongside
"Walden," "Silent Spring" and "A Sand County Almanac."" Jonathan
Raban Author of "Driving Home: An American Journey"
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