The River

The River by Peter Heller    272 pages

It’s hard to pigeon-hole this novel into one genre; It’s part wilderness adventure, part thriller and part horror story, with a bit of “Deliverance” thrown in.

Jack and Wynn share a love of literature, camping, canoeing and fishing. “They were best friends at Dartmouth, who had decided to take the summer and fall quarters off.” Fall was closing in as the two were reaching the last few days of their canoe trip on northern Canada’s Maskwa River. They do not foresee the trouble that lies ahead. But if there isn’t some sort of dilemma ahead, there isn’t much tension to the story. 

Their days are filled drifting in their canoe, fishing for their meal, picking wild blueberries and long discussions of literature. The descriptions of the landscape and the animals puts the reader right there in the canoe with them.

The book opens with a major concern: “They had been smelling smoke for two days.”  After setting up camp that night, they “followed a game trail to a ledge of broken rock…looking northwest they saw it…and they knew it was a fire.” It was humongous.

Time became more pressing. They had to reach the landing, several days still away, before the flames could catch up with them.

Further downstream, on a fog-shrouded night, Jack and Wynn heard a couple arguing. They decide against warning them about the fire. The next day, a man appears and stops at their campsite. He is alone, but looks as if he’s been beaten.  Wynn, ever the trusting soul, believes the story the man concocts, but Jack isn’t buying it. He believes that the man killed the woman and would kill them if he got half a chance.

Jack and Wynn slip away, but they backtrack to look for the woman. Once they find her, it becomes a race for life as the struggle to reach civilization.

A heart-pounding read, except for one thing. Heller’s preferred format of chunky blocks of text kept throwing me out of the story. It felt like a self-published book where the author was trying to get attention by the unexpected format.  It turns out that Heller formats all his books like that.  Still, I found it highly irritating, and that is why “The River” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.