Title : The River
Author : Peter Heller
Narrators : Mark Deakins
Genre : Mystery/Adventure
Publisher : Random House Audio
Listening Length : 7 hours 18 minutes
Rating : 4/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5

The River is my second Peter Heller book after the magnificent Dog Stars. And this is very different from that post-apocalyptic world, different but still pretty good.

Friends Wynn and Jack decide to canoe the Canadian Maskwa river. Both love this, and look forward to some leisurely boating, pipe-smoking and reading. However this relaxing journey through the wilderness gets dangerous fast. The two spot a huge forest fire heading towards them. To top that they meet a couple of unsavory characters and then a man whose wife has apparently gone missing.

As minimalists who like being close to nature Wynn and Jack have packed the bare essentials. They have not a satellite phone nor a fast boat to take them to civilization and safety, or even to call for help. When trouble comes these normally gentle boys will need to take a stand, and trouble comes in spades.

Peter Heller knows how to tell a story. Yes, he uses sentence fragments, but it fits in the flow, and there’s a certain simplicity, a certain quaint earnestness to his telling. He describes his characters well, at times going into rhapsodies over the outdoorsy details. The book is not quite a heart-pounding adventure, but it has its moments.

I thought that the two boys, and they were young college boys, had the maturity and surety of much older men. Other than that slight oddity, I enjoyed this book very much. It is a well-told tale and has its poignant moments. Mark Deakins enhanced the pleasure of this Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee with his great narration.