This American River: Five Centuries of Writing about the Connecticut

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.