Brave the Wild River

I will read books on pretty much any topic and genre if they are narrative-driven, literary, and compelling. With this book, I could tell from the first page that this book was going to check all of those boxes. At both the sentence level and story level, this book is incredible.

An epic adventure of 1930s women scientists studying the Grand Canyon rendered in lush prose? Yes, please. Nonfiction wilderness adventure books starring women, let alone women scientists, are a rare treat; in the hands of such a skilled author, they are truly dazzling.

On a personal note, I had the great honor in the early 1960s of kayaking a wild section of the Colorado River with two young women who were the first to do it. It will come as no surprise that I loved Sevigny’s nonfiction work about Lois Jotter and Elzada Clover, the first two women to run the Colorado River and live to talk about it.

Oh, and they also collected and recorded the canyon’s botanical specimens just before much geology, archeology, and botany was sacrificed to large reservoirs held back by dams—and that brings me back to The Monkey… show more.

Women are often left out of tales of exploration and adventure. Melissa Sevigny sets things straight by telling the story of Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter’s scientific expedition to the Grand Canyon in 1938.

Clover and Jotter were serious botanists with a plan to document the species at the bottom of the world-famous chasm. I found it hard to believe the obstacles placed in their way, from the reluctance to sponsor a women’s expedition on such a dangerous river to the incredulous newspapermen who would show up at resupply points doubting they were still alive. Clover and Jotter triumphed over… show more.

Combine vivid descriptions of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River with the enthralling story of two under-recognized women botanists who went there in the 1930s—how can you go wrong?

People back then thought women would be unable to survive the rapids of the Colorado, much less do groundbreaking science in the canyon. Sevigny’s protagonists, however, did both, with historic results.

Brave the Wild River is adventure, biography, and natural history in a compelling mix.

I’ve had Grand Canyon under my skin since 2022, when I took a twenty-one-day raft trip from Lee’s Ferry to Pearce Ferry.

I felt an instant kinship with female botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, whose real-life adventures unfold in Brave the Wild River. Like them, I’m a scientist. Like them, I’ve had to deal with sexism in my profession as well as on the river. Like them, I was utterly captivated by the surreal beauty of the region.

This book is top-notch science writing and rip-roaring storytelling. Sevigny delights with vivid descriptions of whitewater, natural history, and geology. She… show more.

I have always had an interest in the Earth sciences and happily studied anthropology and archaeology in college. But especially as a writer and lover of stories about women in the wild, I was totally in awe of the skilled narration and intensive historical research that Sevigny brought to the table and wove skillfully into each paragraph of this brilliant nonfiction account of two female botanists blazing a water trail down the deadly Colorado River in 1938.

It is absorbing, educational, and an important contribution to women’s history and nature writing in general. Ken Burns, take note!