The riveting true story of Dick Conant an American folk hero who over the course of more than
twenty years canoed solo thousands of miles of American rivers-and then disappeared near the
Outer Banks of North Carolina. This book contains everything: adventure mystery travelogue
and unforgettable characters (David Grann best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).
For decades Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America covering the Mississippi Yellowstone
Ohio Hudson as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats
of planning perseverance and physical courage. At the same time Conant collected people
wherever he went creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever
remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting. Ben McGrath a staff
writer at The New Yorker was one of those people. In 2014 he met Conant by chance just north
of New York City as Conant paddled down the Hudson headed for Florida. McGrath wrote a widely
read article about their encounter and when Conant's 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--to capture a remarkable life lived far outside the staid confines of modern existence.
Riverman is a moving portrait of a complex and fascinating man who was as troubled as he was
charismatic who struggled with mental illness and self-doubt and was ultimately unable to
fashion a stable life for himself who traveled alone and yet thrived on connection and brought
countless people together in his wake. It is also a portrait of an America we rarely see: a
nation of unconventional characters small river towns and long-forgotten waterways.
