A lavishly illustrated, comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of the natural and human elements that comprise the Upper Connecticut River watershed

The great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America.

A well-crafted tale of secrets and evil lurking under the surface in the Mississippi river town of Pilotville, Louisiana, during the great flood of 1927.

"Ellen Waterston's new book is a slug of juniper air, a breath-taking view of a rough-edged land, as bracing and taut as October morningsùpart celebration, part elegy all love and the wisdom that grows from deep roots in basalt rock. Like Wallace Stegner and Ivan Doig, Waterston writes masterfully about what it meansùwhat it really means -to live in the West."-Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Wild Comfort There is an otherness to the high desert, something momentous and sacred in the purity of the silence. In this compelling collection of personal essays, award winning poet and author Ellen Waterston illuminates the people, places, and landscapes of central Oregon's vast high desert. In Where the Crooked River Rises, Waterston reveals the blessings and challenges of decades spent as a rancher and town resident in a place that has been, and remains, her touchstone and crucible. The high desert is Waterston's teacher, and she describes its lessons with grace and care, inviting readers to look at their own lives through a lens of wide-open spaces, sagebrush and juniper, pumice and rabbit blush.

The gripping, true-life story of one of the most destructive floods in U.S. history and its effect on one city and its citizens.