A portrait in words, the first full-scale anthology of writing on the Connecticut River ever compiled.

The Connecticut, New England’s dominant waterway and, since 1999, an American Heritage River, drains much of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. For five centuries its natural beauty and rich history have inspired an enormously diverse and impressive array of writers. A major transportation artery and power source, it has been the main avenue for colonial settlements, Indian raids and border conflicts, as well as historic floods and hurricanes, epic log drives, farms and industries, sport and quiet reflection. More recently, the river’s drama has included disappearance and then reclamation of salmon and shad runs, and increasingly successful fights to restore the purity and health of its water.

In This American River, noted novelist and premier New England nature writer W. D. Wetherell, long enamored of the river and its vast literature, celebrates the Connecticut in this eclectic anthology. Excerpted novels, essays, poems, journals, and histories—by Henry David Thoreau, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Wallace Stevens, Rudyard Kipling, Francis Parkman, and a splendid array of such contemporary writers as Sylvia Plath, Bill McKibben, and Sydney Lea—together portray this magnificent American river in all its glory.

W.D. WETHERELL is the author of fourteen books, including the novels Morning (2001), The Wisest Man in America (UPNE, 1995), and Chekhov’s Sister (1990), and also Wherever That Great Heart May Be: Stories (UPNE, 1996) and The River Trilogy (Vermont River, Upland Stream, and One River More, 1985–1988). He is the holder of the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and letters; his writing on travel appears fequently in The New York Times. Wetherell lives with his family near the banks of the Connecticut in the riverside town of Lyme, New Hampshire, where he is active in local and regional efforts to protect the river.

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