• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2021 December #1
  *Starred Review* In 2014, McGrath had a chance encounter with river explorer Dick Conant, who paddled by McGrath's house on the Hudson River. For decades, Conant lived a vagabond life holding a variety of jobs while traveling solo along major rivers and tributaries, and on this occasion, he had recently embarked on a waterway journey from Upstate New York to Florida in a 14-foot canoe. McGrath, a staff writer for the New Yorker, wrote a piece about Conant for the magazine; then in November of that year, he received a call from North Carolina officials because his phone number was found in the gear of a missing canoer. Conant's body never turned up, and he is presumed dead. Consulting Conant's journals and a wealth of documents found in storage, along with the help of Conant's family members and a host of friends and one-time acquaintances, McGrath retraces the remarkable life of this gentle man whose life on the water touched so many. Riverman honors a free-spirited American naturalist and modern-day explorer (a blend of Forrest Gump, Huck Finn, and even Don Quixote) who shucked a conventional lifestyle for complete freedom, at significant personal cost. A masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.

BEN McGRATH is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. He lives outside New York City in a small town on the Hudson, with his wife and two children. This is his first book.