Jonathan Raban is an English author who fell in love with the Mississippi River when he was a boy (he was reading HUCKLEBERRY FINN) . Over the years he dreamed about drifting its length. In 1979, he flew to Minneapolis, bought a 16 foot outboard launch, and set off for New Orleans. He takes us with him every step of the way. " The book and the journey would be all of a piece," Raban writes, " The plot would be written by the current of the river itself. It would carry one into long deep pools of solitude...Everything would be left to chance. There would be no advance reservations, no letters of introduction. One would try to be as much like a piece of driftwood as one could manage. "