Fall Book Review ~ Eternal On The Water

by Joseph Monninger

Jonathan Cobb is an English professor who takes a sabbatical from teaching to take a kayaking trip down the Allagash River in Maine so that he can experience what Thoreau experienced, that of simple living and enjoying nature.  Little does he know it will change his life forever but not in the way he supposes.  On his first day there he meets Mary, a corvid (crow and raven) scientist, who also loves the simple life and deriving pleasure from nature.  From the moment they meet they fall madly and deeply in love.  But Mary, and now Cobb with her,  must face some hard turbulents in her life, harder than the river rapids they are kayaking together.  As they try to build the best life they can together, Mary's outlook on life, to live each day to the absolute fullest, brings them closer and more in love as they face the hard times.

This was a lovely story, one of deep love and absolute commitment no matter life's journey.   It was a story of friendship and uplifting others.  And it was a story of living life the best you know how, to the fullest living in each moment.  The settings in the book of Maine, Indonesia and Yellowstone National Park were beautifully described by the author.  It made me want to go to all three areas just to experience them.  The story incorporated a lot of nature into it and I think I learned more about crows than I ever thought I wanted to know.  LOL.  While I did enjoy the interjections of nature throughout,  I did sort of tire of some of the mythology and; storytelling within the story, a story within a story, per se.  I really wanted to like the stories told by Mary,  I'm sure there was some significance to them, but I was too caught up in the other aspects of the story to focus on figuring all that out.  I found myself skipping a few of those.  But the main story itself, that of Mary and Cobb's life together was told beautifully and I liked how the author mingled that together with a group that reaches out to young girls and whose influence had greatly affected Mary's life . I also liked how he used the river as a significant part of the story affecting both Cobb and Mary's lives from beginning to end.   A box of kleenex is definitely a must in the last chapters.  The book does delve into a very tough subject that is a hot debate right now.  I don't want to reveal it, though, because it will give away some aspects of what happens.  It did make me think about it though, not to agree or disagree with it, but to think about it, to where exactly my stand might be.