The River Less Run: A Memoir"If I could liken life to one thing in this world", writes Tim McLaurin, "I would choose a river". But rivers, a hard life has taught him, "are all illusions". Nearly a decade after his highly acclaimed and popular memoir Keeper of the Moon, McLaurin returns to that genre to record a year at mid-life, a year with many rivers to be tamed. The highlight of this year is a long-planned trip westward in a Winnebago so that his mother can see the Rocky Mountains. With them are his children, Meghan and Christopher, his brother Bruce, whose very marrow now fills his bones, and his brother-in-law Donnie. As the group travels westward, his mother weighing down the Winnebago with souvenir rocks, McLaurin reflects on the journeys he has taken, the rivers he has run, to reach this juncture -- his relationship with women, his bouts with alcoholism, his writing, and most importantly his family, especially his children. It becomes a journey of discovery, opening his mind "deep and blazing like the throat of a morning glory" to the most important facet of life. |
