Reviewed by Sarah Boon

In The River’s Daughter: A Memoir (Spiegel & Grau; June 2025), Bridget Crocker was born right into a dysfunctional household. Her mom left her father when Bridget was 4 years previous, as he beat her in entrance of Bridget. Her mother moved on to construct a life with a quiet, first rate man, Sully, who was Bridget’s well-loved surrogate father for seven years.

Sooner or later Bridget’s mother decides she doesn’t need to be with Sully, turning Bridget’s life the wrong way up. Bridget is sexually assaulted a number of instances as a tween/teenager, and her mom’s response is, “Nicely…you higher get used to it. It’s simply going to maintain taking place to you.”

Disillusioned together with her mom, Bridget strikes from Jackson Gap to stay together with her beginning father in California. At first it appears idyllic, however he begins to beat her the way in which he beat her mom, then acts as if every part’s high-quality and nothing occurred. Bridget finds refuge in her closet, the place she’s pinned up photos of Africa and different distant locations that she hopes to go to.

After a 12 months or two, Bridget can now not endure the beatings, so she strikes again to her mom in Jackson Gap. Her mom has grow to be a rabid environmental activist together with her associate, Mark, they usually lead backpacking journeys within the wilderness round Jackson. Bridget works as a path information with them, though she’s nonetheless in her teenagers. When she returns to high school within the fall, she provides up her standing as a wise woman and begins reducing lessons and smoking weed. She hooks up with Steve — a person ten years older — when she’s 17. Then Steve will get a job coaching river rafters, and Bridget indicators on.

When Bridget discovers rafting, it stirs one thing deep inside her. She feels most at house on the river, whom she will be able to hear speaking to her, and she or he will get in a movement state whereas rafting, seeing nothing however the line she should comply with by means of the rapids to get safely to the opposite aspect. “I shifted into one other dimension, the place there was no mother, no shoppers, no self. My give attention to the sound was so intense and fixed that I grew to become the vibration, I used to be now not observing it however channeling the hum into my cells,” she writes. She additionally turns into extra assertive, and has a member of the rafting workforce fired for sexual harassment. That is empowering for her, particularly in such a male-dominated job.

After two years of guiding on American rivers, Steve will get a possibility to run rafts down the Zambezi river, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It’s a dream come true, given the pictures Bridget had posted on her closet wall at her dad’s home. She indicators as much as work with Steve and finds the river is ten instances as fierce because the rivers she’s used to guiding, and the boats are totally different – they use oars not paddles and the shoppers don’t do any paddling, simply highsiding: leaping on the aspect of the raft to maintain it from tipping up and over. On her first day on the Zambezi she pilots a ship by means of large rapids and manages to maintain it from tipping. She sees the road she should take, and follows by means of into the eddy the place they pull out the boats.

The very best a part of the e-book is that Bridget can speak to rivers—the Snake River, which runs previous the trailer park she lives in together with her mom, tells her to swim when she falls in as a toddler. She asks different rivers to bless her passage by splashing her face with water and touching her third eye. The Zambezi River (Nyaminyami) is far angrier than the rivers she’s rafted within the US—it’s indignant concerning the lack of its spouse river, which was dammed. Bridget feels its anger and energy, and asks for secure passage anyway.

Her time in Zambia is marked by damage and demise.

Amidst all of that is the surprising racism of Whites over Blacks, which Bridget seeks to rectify. She learns to talk one of many native languages and offers with folks’s illnesses together with her first support package at her aspect. She makes mates with the Black girls who work within the rafting firm’s house base. However her push to get different Whites to deal with Blacks with respect is misplaced and really American in what was a British colony. She struggles with assembly the requirements of the White males who run the rafting firm whereas additionally being respectful of the Black individuals who work for them, which I think about is a tough line to comply with. However as she writes: “I had no enterprise making an attempt to save lots of anybody or change something once I was incapable of saving or altering myself.”

Bridget loves her rafting life, and desires to share it together with her household. As soon as she’s again within the States, she invitations her mother on a rafting journey. Sadly, her mom alienates the opposite shoppers on the journey and Bridget has to rein her in and inform her to play good. Not one thing her mom desires to listen to. Later she invitations her dad and half-brother on a visit, which matches remarkably effectively, and her dad apologizes for every part he put her by means of. “All I need is to be a greater dad…I’m so sorry. I need to be the dad you deserve,” he says.

I loved this e-book as a result of it’s to this point out of my wheelhouse; I’ve by no means even been river rafting. However  Crocker writes about it so compellingly that I really feel like I’m on the river together with her, highsiding in Zambia or paddling a jerry-rigged boat in California. I used to be additionally rooting for her to search out her means by means of life emotionally, and appreciated the inclusion of Crocker’s non secular connection to rivers — one thing that makes her e-book stand out amongst others on this style.

The River’s Daughter is a page-turning story a couple of girl coming into her personal in a male-dominated occupation after a childhood of sexual, bodily, and emotional abuse. River rafting is her lifeline, one thing that brings her again to herself and helps her rise above her troubles. The rafting scenes are riveting, and the e-book is well-written, with wonderful timing and pacing.