BIG RIVER TO CROSS

I loved it, and it seems to me it has much the same sort of chance for success that Carmer's Stars Fell on Alabama had. It strikes a different note from the books in the Rivers series; it is less the historical background and the country through which the river flows, and more of the boats that ply their trade up and down the river and the people who make their living on the river. It scarcely seems necessary to say that the ""big river"" is the Mississippi. Packet boats, steamboats, show boats, shanty boats, barges, all have their place; and woven in and through the story of how they fight droughts and floods and how they make the pattern of the river, is the record of the captains, the crews -- and specifically and individually and humanly; of roustabouts and river pirates and the flotsam and jetsam that give color and life to the whole. Grand reading and good Americana, although the surface picture is Mississippi life today.