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The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon
by Kevin Fedarko
From one of Outside magazine's "Literary All-Stars" comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever through the Grand Canyon, atop the legendary Colorado River flood of 1983.
In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named "The Emerald Mile" at the head of the Grand Canyon, just fifteen miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, seemed not just odd, but downright suicidal.
The Emerald Mile, at one time slated to be destroyed, was rescued and brought back to life by Kenton Grua, the man at the oars, who intended to use this flood as a kind of hydraulic sling-shot. The goal was to nail the all-time record for the fastest boat ever propelled—by oar, by motor, or by the grace of God himself—through the heart of the Grand Canyon atop the Colorado River from Lee's Ferry to Lake Mead. Did he survive? Just barely. Now, this remarkable, epic feat unfolds here, in The Emerald Mile.
What are you reading this week? (11/14/2024)
I'm finishing up A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko. Kevin is an outdoor/nature/adventure writer and this book is about hiking the Grand Canyon. His former book is The Emerald Mile about rafting the Grand Canyon and I loved it.
-Anne_Glasgow
"Powerful and poetic passages put readers inside the adventurers' boats, even if they have only ever imagined the Grand Canyon or seen it in pictures... Each piece of the story is assembled as lyrically as the epoch-spanning walls of canyon itself… an epic-sized true-life adventure tale that appeals to both the heart and the head." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Grua's wild ride on the Colorado, how it mirrored his mercurial personality, is just one part of Fedarko's story; however, the ride, which runs through seven states, and the canyon, rich in both geological and political history, prove to be the real protagonists." ―Publishers Weekly
This information about The Emerald Mile was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kevin Fedarko has spent the past twenty years writing about conservation, exploration, and the Grand Canyon. He has been a staff writer at Time, where he worked primarily on the foreign affairs desk, and a senior editor at Outside, where he covered outdoor adventure. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other publications. He is the author of The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon, which won the Reading the West Book Award, and A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, which won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Both books were also New York Times bestsellers and winners of a National Outdoor Book Award. Fedarko lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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