Peter Heller's The River One of the Year's Best

The River (2019)

By Peter Heller

Knopf/Borzoi Books, 272 pages.

★★★★★

If the measure of a great book is heart-stopping drama, memorable characters, a tight plot, and evocative prose, The River is a strong candidate for the best novel of 2019. Imagine a mash between James Dickey (Deliverance, 1970) and Jack London that’s less histrionic than the first and more eloquently written than the second. Toss in a touch of Kristin Hannah and that’s a bit like what The River is like.

Heller, who gained public acclaim with his post-apocalyptic the Dog Stars (2012), is a master of taking us inside the minds of human beings in isolation and what they feel and fear. He is not the sort to give us last-minute rescues or deus ex machina heroes. Instead he wants us to imagine what is to be done when Fate holds the high cards.  

The River takes us to the northern Canadian wilderness. Two collegiate soulmate friends, Jack and Wynn, take to the Maskwa River with the intent of challenging their athletic bodies as they paddle their well-appointed canoe, sleep out under the stars, cook fish they catch, read some pulp Westerns, and enjoy the solitude. They are adventuresome and simpatico even though they are temperamentally different. Jack is a rugged Coloradan who carries a deep-seated childhood hurt that has left him suspicious in a hair-trigger manner. Wynn, by contrast, is a hulking Vermonter who is a bit clumsy around women, has an Eagle Scout’s sense of duty, and a sometimes too-trusting disposition. But their mutual love of the outdoors and each other’s company makes Jack and Wynn a great team.

As if to underscore their isolation, Heller populates the book with just four other characters: JD and Brent, two hell-raising Texas rednecks; and a couple (Mai and Pierre) whom Jack and Wynn at first know only though raised-voice arguments slicing through the fog. Jack and Wynn face the preliminary dilemma of how to communicate to them what they have a observed: a gigantic forest fire some 30 miles in back of them.

This is, however, far more than your standard idyll-goes-wrong beat-the-clock tale. As in Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone (2018), Heller’s novel is about human beings in the bosom of an impersonal environment. Forget “Mother” Nature as nurturing; in The River she is silent, indifferent, and unforgiving. If Nature has a personality it is that of Shiva the Destroyer, not some benevolent Earth Mother.

In such a scenario, the only subjective values are held by humans who venture into the blue and green void. What would you do if fleeing animals underscored your need to make haste with several dangerous stretches of white water and a few sure-kill waterfalls requiring portage lying ahead in your path? Would you care about the fate of two louts more interested in drinking and making sexist jokes get out? Would you double back and lose precious time to look for a missing person? Would you share dwindling supplies? Incur someone’s wrath?

Jack and Wynn’s dilemma is pretty basic. There is only one way out and the back country is filled with ways to die in addition to the fire: drowning, starvation, bears, devastating injury, crazy people with guns, and–if since it’s late fall–they could freeze to death before the fire overtakes them. They must also come to grips with their own stupidity; when they packed, they forgot the one thing that could save their lives: a satellite phone.

Because Heller is such a gifted writer, he easily leads us into waters in which we expect things that never materialize. This gives him the leeway to spring the unexpected. I will say no more except that it’s been a long time since I’ve been so emotionally wrung out by a novel. The River left me shattered.

Rob Weir