In the present day, America’s inland rivers are a superhighway dominated by leviathan barges-carrying $80 billion of cargo annually-all descended from flatboats like the ramshackle Patience.Īs a historian, Buck resurrects the era’s adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers’ push for land and wealth. Joining the river traffic were floating brothels, called “gun boats” “smithy boats” for blacksmiths even “whiskey boats” for alcohol. Settler families repurposed the wood from their boats to build their first cabins in the wilderness cargo boats were broken apart and sold to build the boomtowns along the water route. Between 18, millions of farmers, merchants, and teenage adventurers embarked from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia on flatboats headed beyond the Appalachians to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The role of the flatboat in our country’s evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize.
As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era.
Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands, and steep levees. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.Ī modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The eagerly awaited return of master American storyteller Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand “flatboat era” of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River, illuminating the forgotten past of America’s first western frontier.
Louis Post-Dispatch * “Both a travelogue and an engaging history lesson about America’s westward expansion.” - The Christian Science Monitor NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Audacious… Life on the Mississippi sparkles.” - The Wall Street Journal * “A rich mix of history, reporting, and personal introspection.” - St.
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