Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand ...

Books

Winner of the 2023 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award in Memoir/Biography A Booklist Top of the List Winner for Nonfiction in 2023 A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 "Thrilling, expertly paced, warmhearted." -Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the ...