John Hildebrand sets out in a canoe . . . to explore the great riverway of northwestern Canada and Alaska. . . . The geography is closely rendered and the characters especially sharply drawn. The country is filled with mad dropouts at river fish camps, good-hearted girls in the towns, sullen natives in tumbledown villages, cranky old-timers, terrible drunks and worse moralizers who live off the wild landscape and its abundant resources. . . . This is a fine work, and Hildebrand is a fine writer.Charles E. Little, Wilderness For many of us the North has been the one place where a certain elemental experienceof land, water, and peoplecan still be had. John Hildebrands personal account of this experience has a particular freshness and poignancy. It is the record of a journey, as much inward as it is outward, and all the better for that.John Haines, author of The Stars, The Snow, The Fire A finely written account of coming to terms with ones self, of the realities of ones dreams. Recommended for anyone who would follow Thoreau into the woods, even now.Library Journal Hildebrand has every skill of mind and craft to enfold us in his experience.The New Yorker