Disappointment River

Disappointment River
Title Disappointment River PDF eBook
Author Brian Castner
Publisher Anchor
Total Pages 442
Release 2018-03-13
Genre History
ISBN 0385541635

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In 1789, Alexander Mackenzie traveled 1200 miles on the immense river in Canada that now bears his name, in search of the fabled Northwest Passage that had eluded mariners for hundreds of years. In 2016, the acclaimed memoirist Brian Castner retraced Mackenzie's route by canoe in a grueling journey -- and discovered the Passage he could not find. Disappointment River is a dual historical narrative and travel memoir that at once transports readers back to the heroic age of North American exploration and places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of globalization and climate change. Fourteen years before Lewis and Clark, Mackenzie set off to cross the continent of North America with a team of voyageurs and Chipewyan guides, to find a trade route to the riches of the East. What he found was a river that he named "Disappointment." Mackenzie died thinking he had failed. He was wrong. In this book, Brian Castner not only retells the story of Mackenzie's epic voyages in vivid prose, he personally retraces his travels, battling exhaustion, exposure, mosquitoes, white water rapids and the threat of bears. He transports readers to a world rarely glimpsed in the media, of tar sands, thawing permafrost, remote indigenous villages and, at the end, a wide open Arctic Ocean that could become a far-northern Mississippi of barges and pipelines and oil money.

The Long Walk

The Long Walk
Title The Long Walk PDF eBook
Author Brian Castner
Publisher Anchor
Total Pages 240
Release 2012-07-10
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN 0385536216

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In the tradition of Michael Herr’s Dispatches and works by such masters of the memoir as Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff, a powerful account of war and homecoming. Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. Days and nights he and his team—his brothers—would venture forth in heavily armed convoys from their Forward Operating Base to engage in the nerve-racking yet strangely exhilarating work of either disarming the deadly improvised explosive devices that had been discovered, or picking up the pieces when the alert came too late. They relied on an army of remote-controlled cameras and robots, but if that technology failed, a technician would have to don the eighty-pound Kevlar suit, take the Long Walk up to the bomb, and disarm it by hand. This lethal game of cat and mouse was, and continues to be, the real war within America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But The Long Walk is not just about battle itself. It is also an unflinching portrayal of the toll war exacts on the men and women who are fighting it. When Castner returned home to his wife and family, he began a struggle with a no less insidious foe, an unshakable feeling of fear and confusion and survivor’s guilt that he terms The Crazy. His thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book immerses the reader in two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror and excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within—the haunting memories that will not fade, the survival instincts that will not switch off. After enduring what he has endured, can there ever again be such a thing as “normal”? The Long Walk will hook you from the very first sentence, and it will stay with you long after its final gripping page has been turned.

Life and Death at Cape Disappointment

Life and Death at Cape Disappointment
Title Life and Death at Cape Disappointment PDF eBook
Author Christopher J. D'Amelio
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages 225
Release 2021-05-01
Genre History
ISBN 1493058738

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The ocean is one of the few untamed places on earth—unpredictable and unsympathetic to the lives lost there. For this reason, people remain fascinated by its tides, currents, and mysteries. Life and Death at Cape Disappointment is Christopher J. D'Amelio's first-hand account of life as a surfman at one of the Coast Guard’s most dangerous stations. Cape Disappointment is one of the most notorious Coast Guard units on the Pacific Coast. Its area of responsibility is referred to as the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” This book focuses on five of the most significant search and rescue cases during D'Amelio's tour and how such work affected him and his colleagues mentally and physically. It’s armchair entertainment for those enthralled by the ocean.

Rushes from the River Disappointment

Rushes from the River Disappointment
Title Rushes from the River Disappointment PDF eBook
Author Stephanie Roberts
Publisher Hugh MacLennan Poetry
Total Pages 128
Release 2020-04-16
Genre Poetry
ISBN 9780228001676

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Lyrical field notes exploring tests of courage in relationships from a bold emerging voice in Canadian poetry.

The River

The River
Title The River PDF eBook
Author Peter Heller
Publisher Knopf
Total Pages 273
Release 2019
Genre Fiction
ISBN 0525521879

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A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A fiery tour de force... I could not put this book down. It truly was terrifying and unutterably beautiful." -Alison Borden, The Denver Post From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman 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. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the 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.

The Graces

The Graces
Title The Graces PDF eBook
Author Laure Eve
Publisher Abrams
Total Pages 350
Release 2016-09-06
Genre Young Adult Fiction
ISBN 1613121385

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“The Graces demands to be read twice: The first time for the suspense; the second for the subtleties you missed initially.” —The New York Times Book Review Everyone loves the Graces. Fenrin, Thalia, and Summer Grace are attractive, rich, and glamorous, and they’ve cast a spell over their high school—and their entire town. They’re also rumored to have powerful connections all over the world. If you’re not in love with one of them, you want to be one of them. This is especially true for River, the new girl at school. River’s different from the rest of the horde that both revere and fear the Grace family. She’s dark, aloof, and just maybe . . . magical. And she wants to be a Grace more than anything. But what the Graces don’t know is that River’s presence in their town is no accident. The first rule of witchcraft is that if you want something bad enough, you can get it . . . no matter who has to pay. “A teenage girl becomes obsessed with a family of reputed witches . . . vivid . . . powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Eve conjures up an intriguing vision of small-town mystique, with the Grace family depicted as unknowable and otherworldly—the mystery of whether magic is at play hangs over much of the story—and self-involved, obsessive River’s less-than-trustworthy narration adds to the air of uncertainty.” —Publishers Weekly

The Dark River

The Dark River
Title The Dark River PDF eBook
Author John Twelve Hawks
Publisher Vintage Books USA
Total Pages 425
Release 2008
Genre Fiction
ISBN 0307389235

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Narrowly escaping the imprisonment of his brother, Michael, Gabriel Corrigan, aided by his Harlequin protector Maya, discovers that his long-missing father may still be alive and trapped somewhere in Europe and races against time to find the lost Traveler before his traitor brother and his Brethren allies can destroy him, in the sequel to The Traveler. Reprint.