Once This River Ran Clear

In 1950 as progress becomes another name for greed a sixteen year old boy learns from the people surrounding him. He and Urs a bear-like man live in a shabby cabin on the Nawaakamig River existing happily on other peoples trash and on the carp which pollute the water. Urss land is coveted by a developer setting off a chain of painful tragic events which overtake unlucky people including the hobos who spend summers with Urs. The boy bounces from the humble cabin to the local elite family to an Ojibwa community using what he learns from each situation to find his self and settle a score.If at the end of Twains novel Huckleberry Finn does in fact light out for the Territory the sixteen year old narrator of Once This River Ran Clear might be his grandson. On the lowest rung of society he tries to make sense of the larger world and attempts to solve a mysterious crime. Novelist Peter Martin leads his self-taught narrator through picaresque adventures as he discovers injustice and develops his personal ethos.David R. Solheim author of Riverbend: Poems