Set in the central Kentucky basins of the Rough Green and Ohio Rivers in191617 <strong>Rafting Rise</strong> joins the storytelling virtues of fiction with thei... » 

Set in the central Kentucky basins of the Rough Green and Ohio Rivers in191617 Rafting Rise joins the storytelling virtues of fiction with theintensity of the poetic lyric to reach a wider audience including readers ofpoetry lovers of good tales and those interested in the small events ofhistory recreated through the lives of carefully imagined characters.The books central action is the rafting of logs in winter down the rivers tothe lumber mills in Evansville Indiana. Survant recreates the whole fabric ofthe hardscrabble society that lives by this perilous trade. They are toughpeople such as Carl Peters stranded on a raft run aground in a freezing rainwalking in a figure eight all night to stay alive while his fellow rafter TomSimpson who didnt make it . . . laylike frozen woodin the bottom of ourboat. Elsewhere in love poems and poems celebrating the lush riverinelandscape Survant conveys the simple sensuous moments that punctuate thishard life. Here is Bill Balcom at a camp meeting eighteen and chafing foradventure on the river When I tooka piece of Susies buttermilk pie I sawher looking and when I ateI imaginedher taste.But none of the characters is more vivid than Sallie the female protagonist ahalfmad medicine woman living with her dogs in whatever shelter she can find.Survant gives Sallie such a deep empathy with the countryside and its creaturesthat she becomes the spirit of the place. But Sallie pays dearly for herempathy with nature hearing voices over which she has no power. Worse she hasthe curse of prophecy can see the hand of death before it strikes and is asmuch feared as needed by the community.Throughthese and a handful of other characters Survant fashions a verse epicof Kentucky on the eve of the entry of the United States into World War I. Thisvolume continues the experiment begun in his earlier Anne Alpheus combiningpoetry and narrative to tell the story of «