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Brave the Wild River

The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

ebook
1 of 3 copies available
1 of 3 copies available

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography
Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Memoir/Biography
Selected as a Southwest Book of the Year Top Pick
Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Reporting on the Environment, Honorable Mention

A Booklist Top of the List Winner for Nonfiction in 2023
A New Yorker Best Book of 2023

"Thrilling, expertly paced, warmhearted." —Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle

The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon.

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first.

Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon's secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river's most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river runners into an ally. Clover and Jotter's plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystem.

Brave the Wild River is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West, at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 20, 2023
      In this marvelous history, science journalist Sevigny (Mythical River) recounts the 43-day rowboat trip down the Colorado River undertaken by University of Michigan botanist Elzada Clover and her mentee Lois Jotter during the summer of 1938. Sevigny details how the duo successfully catalogued the flora of the Grand Canyon while enduring raging rapids, “stomach-somersaulting drops, and standing waves big enough to swallow a boat whole,” but her focus is on how Clover and Jotter refuted sexist assumptions about the role of women in science. Though historically botany had been deemed too feminine for men, Clover and Jotter undertook their expedition at a time when male scientists were becoming increasingly involved in the field and began excluding women (a well-known adventurer remarked, “Women... do not belong in the Canyon of the Colorado”). Sevigny also weaves in stimulating trivia on the natural history of the Grand Canyon, including explanations of the geological forces behind its formation and National Park Service efforts to repopulate native animals in the region. Drawing on Clover and Jotter’s journals and letters, Sevigny recreates their expedition in novelistic detail, producing a narrative as propulsive as the current of the Colorado. Readers will be swept away. Photos.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from April 1, 2023
      Meet intrepid, long-overlooked plant lovers Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter. Of different generations and temperaments, they joined forces at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1938 when Clover, new PhD in hand, organized the first formal botanical survey of the Colorado River. This entailed a 600-mile journey down the notoriously dangerous river through the Grand Canyon just before the Hoover Dam radically altered the region. Clover recruited doctoral candidate Jotter, and found a guide willing to lead their expedition in spite of widespread resistance to including women on any nautical or riverine explorations. Not only did the botanists contend with treacherous rapids and other perils of nature, they were also bombarded with misogynistic and sensationalized press coverage. A spellbinding writer of informed and ardent attentiveness, wit, and empathy, Sevigny splendidly conveys the dramatic beauty of this unique riverscape and casts light on the Indigenous people who cultivated plants in the canyonlands for millennia before being forced off the land. As she brings both intriguing botanists vividly to life, Sevigny also captures the intensity of the expedition's dangers and the seemingly miraculous ability of the scientists to collect and preserve 500 plant specimens, some new to science, under nearly impossible conditions while also doing all the cooking. A breath-catching, enlightening, and significant work of scientific, environmental, and women's history.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from April 1, 2023
      A biography of two female botanists who cataloged the plants of the Grand Canyon. Sevigny, a science journalist for Arizona Public Radio, recounts the details of the 1938 river journey of Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, who, along with their guide, Norm Nevills, and a few other crew members, traveled down the Colorado River with the goal of cataloging undiscovered plants in the area. As women scientists, Clover and Jotter faced scrutiny even before their trip began. They started in Green River, Utah, and then traveled through Cataract Canyon, Glen Canyon, and the Grand Canyon before ending at Lake Mead. For Clover, the trip "fit perfectly with her dream of cataloging all the Southwest's cacti, but, more than that, it was a chance to make her mark on the field of botany." As they made their way down the river, they continued to face challenges, including navigating intense rapids, losing one of their three boats, and contending with aggressive reporters and inaccurate and speculative news reports. When Clover and Jotter finally reached the entrance of the Grand Canyon, they felt apprehensive, but they decided "they had no choice now but to brave the wild river." Drawing from the crew's letters and journals, Sevigny brings us directly into the boats and introduces us to many of the plants that Clover and Jotter surveyed and collected, including desert mistletoe, Indian paintbrush, and coyote willow. The author also includes a map of the route and images of the crew at different points along the way. Woven throughout the narrative of Clover and Jotter is the early history of travel on the Colorado River as well as how Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and the Park Service have shaped the ecology of the river over time. As the author notes, women in science still face challenges, stereotypes, and barriers; Sevigny hopes that recalling the past will lead to a more equitable future. A beautiful tribute to two pioneering women of science.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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