Tales of ambition, adventure, rivalry, friendship, and love on the waters of the Mississippi River and beyond. In this thrilling collection, award-winning writer Frank Bures tells true stories as varied as the waters, weather, and rhythms of a canoe trip. From the terror of two kayakers who barely escaped from the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire in the Boundary Waters to two young campers who had a supernatural scare in Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park in the 1970s to the author’s own incredible rescue, Bures narrates the full range of what it means to push the river.

The heart of the book is a telling of the lost history of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an annual 450-mile race run on the Upper Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s that gave canoe-racing legend Gene Jensen his start—and which changed the course of modern canoeing. The tale includes the dominance of racers from the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, including many members of the Tibbetts family, and the unacknowledged contributions of Ojibwe canoe builders Jim and Bernie Smith, whose design features are now part of contemporary canoe racing.

Pushing the River is essential reading for anyone who loves what legendary canoeist Bob O’Hara called “the sense of perpetual adventure” that comes in the seat of a canoe, where you never quite know what you will encounter around the river’s next bend.

In conversation with Maggie Ginsberg.

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