Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Memoir/Biography Selected as a Southwest Book of the Year Top Pick Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Reporting on the Environment, Honorable Mention A Booklist Top of the List Winner for Nonfiction in 2023 A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 "Thrilling, expertly paced, warmhearted." ―Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first. Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon’s secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river’s most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river runners into an ally. Clover and Jotter’s plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystem. Brave the Wild River is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West, at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever. 19 illustrations; 1 map "[A] cascade of a story, colored by sun and water and driven by courage and determination." ― Deborah Blum, New York Times Book Review "A page-turner…marvelous and informative." ― Barbara J. King, Science "One of the finest river stories of the Grand Canyon…a long overdue, richly deserved, and beautifully written tribute to a pair of legendary botanists." ― Kevin Fedarko, author of The Emerald Mile "A vivid history.… [G]ripping." ― People "Makes the case that [Elzada] Clover and [Lois] Jotter’s study…provides a crucial benchmark in assessing human impact on the environment." ― The New Yorker "[Melissa L.] Sevigny paints a picture by describing other elements of the canyon journey.… She goes beyond botanizing and writes about the ancestral Puebloan residents of the area, mapmakers, former explorers, honeymooners." ― Mary L. Holden, Los Angeles Review of Books "Highlights the little-known contributions two women made to our knowledge about the Southwest ecology. And it pays homage to a pair of scientists far ahead of their time." ― Anita Snow, Associated Press "[Melissa L. Sevigny] writes beautifully about the geology and botany of the Grand Canyon and the challenges Clover and Jotter met as they collected and preserved the extraordinary region’s plants.… [An] artful account." ― Ann Fabian, National Book Review "Artfully bridges a gap of nearly 100 years to shape the timeless story of a shared human experience with nature." ― Joan Meiners, Arizona Republic "[Melissa L. Sevigny] whips jaw-dropping metaphor from thin air, not losing momentum as she weaves beautiful poetry through a clear, engaging narrative." ― Rebecca Lawton, Boatman’s Quarterly Review "Sweeps up the reader in its seamless weaving of histories with a geographically rich narrative.… [A] brilliant and elegantly written book." ― Geri Lipschultz, Terrain.org "Brings the expertise of a science writer to a story partly about science and the challenges of women’s place in it, about the botany of the Grand Canyon.… Sevigny is a fine writer and tells the story well." ― John Miles, National Parks Traveler "A beautiful tribute to two pioneering women of science." ― Kirkus Reviews, starred review "[A] marvelous history.… Drawing on Clover and Jotter’s journals and letters, Sevigny recreates their expedition in novelistic detail, producing a narrative as propulsive as the current of the Colorado. Readers will be swept away." ― Publishers Weekly, starred review "[Melissa L. Sevigny is] a spellbinding writer of informed and ardent attentiveness, wit, and empathy.… A breath-catching, enlightening, and significant work of scientific, environmental, and women's history." ― Booklist, starred review " Brave the Wild River is everything a book should be, at once a biography, a thriller, and a vivid piece of science writing. In Melissa L. Sevigny’s breathtaking prose, the legendary Grand Canyon comes alive in honey mesqu