Over the course of more than twenty years, Dick Conant solo canoed thousands of miles of American rivers. In 2016 Conant disappeared off the coast of North Carolina; his canoe washed up a few months later, without any sign of his body. McGrath set out to find the people whose lives Conant had touched-- and has created a portrait of a complex man who was as troubled as he was charasmatic. His book is also a portrait of an America we rarely see: a nation of unconventional characters, small river towns, and long-forgotten waterways. -- adapted from jacket