Recalling memoirs like Wild and Educated, an internationally renowned female whitewater rafting guide offers a powerful, gripping, and inspiring memoir about overcoming hardship and coming into her own through her relationship with the rivers she has known.

After Bridget Crocker’s parents split up in a vicious divorce, she moved with her mother from California to Wyoming, to live in a trailer park near the Snake River. Her childhood was idyllic, with a stepfather she loved and a new baby brother, and with the river as her companion. When her mother suddenly left her stepfather for a hippie eco-warrior, and things went spectacularly wrong, Bridget returned to California to live with her explosive father—until his violence sent her back to Wyoming. The one constant in her life was the Snake River, to whom she confided her deepest feelings.

Being on the water healed Bridget—from abuse, sexual assault, and betrayals by those close to her. She became a world-class whitewater rafting guide—admired and respected by her mostly male counterparts for her grit and her courage. The Snake, the Kern, and the Zambezi River in Zambia allowed her to find herself—to trust her intuition and grow into her powers as a woman, overcoming multi-generational cycles of abuse and educational neglect.

In this propulsive story of finding meaning in a life outdoors, Bridget Crocker not only takes us along with her on exciting and sometimes treacherous adventures on the water but opens up a new way of experiencing the world—through its rivers, which can guide us, just as we can navigate them—and introduces a bold and vibrant new voice in adventure writing.