River Stories: Tales from Bo Rockerville

By Monte Dale Smith

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 188669401X
• ISBN13: 9781886694019
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Pahsimeroi Pr
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

If you paddle, buy it, read it.

This is Monte's third book; he first introduced us all to Eugene (Bo) Rocker in his treatise The Obed/Emory Watershed. Bo was the bridge dancer who hurled thunderbolts at the legendary Eustis Frambole, White-haired Tom Hardin, Norman Knight (Associated professor of Ergonomic Adaptation Mechanics, and then later (in a display of typical C-1 paddling legerdemain) rescued Robert Friendly (a kayaker) from an undercut pin and entrapment on Clear Creek.The book is a selection of short stories that are linked and lead to an interesting conclusion. Once you've read this the entire Bo Rocker saga begins to make sense. Two of my favorite pieces from The Obed/Emory Watershed (Bridge Dancers and Birth of a Renegade) are in River Stories. Although the entire book is fiction (somewhere between Hunter S. Thompson and Jimmy Buffet), it was written by a bonafide open boat steep creeker. Smith describes situations all of us who really like to paddle and explore the new and weird have experienced. To wit....Amy had just crawled out of bed wearing one of Bo's long-sleeved shirts, using it for a nightgown. She was saying something to him, but Bo, absorbed in thought, hadn't caught a single word. Suddenly he heard her say, "Are you listening to me?""Of course I am, but..." He turned and looked out the window, longingly toward the river. "I want you to stay here with me today," she said. "There's something we need to do. We've waited long enough." Bo, still looking toward the river replied, "What is it we need to do?""We need to get better acquainted."That brought his head around.She was slowing unbuttoning the shirt, starting at the top, working her way down, from button to button, slow and easy. Taking her time, watching him. She was on the next-to-last button when Bo, making little moaning sounds, started edging toward the door...I brought the book on this year's spring break trip (Little River in Tennessee; Mill Creek and New River @ 10' in Virginia; Blackwater, Cheat, and snowboarding, West Virginia) and read parts of it aloud each evening around the fire. People were howling and someone borrowed it from me every single night. Buy it, read it. If you don't find a nugget of the truth somewhere I'll be surprised.

Unique fiction that tells what real (open) boating is like.

A very enjoyable book for river rats, particularly ones from the Southeast. It rolls along quickly, if you don't pay attention, you may get a little lost. If you are a whitewater paddler, you MUST read this- there are too few books written just for us.

Whitewater thrills and other shenanigans in Bo Rockerville

Monte Smith is well known in the paddling community for two outstanding whitewater guidebooks. A Paddler's Guide to the Obed/Emory Watershed with its humor, innovative story elements, and in-depth information, has achieved the status of a classic. And his more recent Southeastern Whitewater: 50 of the Best River Trips from Alabama to West Virginia, incorporates a plethora of technical innovations, including a river rating scale (the TRIP Scale) on which all 50 trips in the book can be cross-referenced on ten different river characteristics, including overall paddling difficulty. River Stories: Tales from Bo Rockerville is Smith's first full-length work of fiction, and it's a doozie. It follows the antics of Eugene (Bo) Rocker, both on and off the river, as he desperately struggles to parlay his paddlesport notoriety into a starring role in a major motion picture. Bo's predicaments are both multifarious and geographically dispersed, literally spanning the globe. All the scenes, however, have one t