My buddy called and said, “Let’s kayak down a river in Idaho for 5 days.” And I said, “Why Idaho? And I don’t know how to kayak.” Three months later I climbed into a kayak on a raging river in Idaho next to my 16-year-old daughter in her kayak.
At the time, I was looking for an adventure to weave into a first novel. I had been studying creative writing at Stanford University and felt pretty confident about my grasp of character, dialogue, and description. For me the big challenge was going to be plot, or how the story unfolds into action.
Excited about the adventure, the characters, and the exhilaration on a wild river, I was ready to get started. So, my story began at the top of a sizable stream, rumbled down a long stretch to become a flooded, swollen, and treacherous, danger to life and limb. The trip became a metaphor for rolling down the river of life. I called it, The Purple River.
Flipping my boat over in a cold, fast river flow was an exhilarating experience and some of those shivering times are written into the story. The Purple River escapade is on the Salmon River, but I had great fun weaving all the other trips in Oregon, California and Idaho into an adventure for Jackson, Jordan, Simon and the whole river crew.
