Overview

Emulating a dusty, torn-to-shreds book of adventures you'd pull out of a satchel while crossing the open prairie, Boats On A River is an intimate trail through history's moments, chanced by a traveler out of sync with it all. Newly elected to present-day Congress, Franklin Knight is cantankerous, a bit of a dreamer, and a man with more than his share of baggage-a complicated gentleman. Scattered throughout America's long march to a contemporary semblance of civility are loners and ragtag collectives, tribal natives and invading soldiers, who were indeed quintessential outsiders. Nonconformists swept up in defining moments with which they had little or nothing in common. Representative Knight finds himself on a river of unfamiliar people he's ill-prepared to meet. A trip downriver; perplexing encounters and fields of battle. Inspired by the Americana of writers who rendered the gritty, immersive realism of characters driven by their story, traversing open country and headed downriver. Every history is a story always told for the first time.