"Norman Nevills hammered together his first crude boat from a horse trough and a privy, launched it below his home in Mexican Hat, Utah, and rowed his bride Doris down the San Juan River for their honeymoon. They fell in love with the river and realized others could find a similar thrill. Within four years Nevills had invented the idea of whitewater tourism and was running several commercial trips each summer down the San Juan."

"In 1938 Nevills took the next step, designing a new craft for serious whitewater, and taking on the formidable rapids of Cataract Canyon and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. For twelve years Nevills tackled the San Juan, Green, Colorado, Salmon, and Snake Rivers, never flipping a boat nor losing a passenger. When he and Doris died in a tragic plane crash in 1949, Nevills was by far the most experienced whitewater man in history." "National media found Nevills irresistible and portrayed him as the dazzling wizard of whitewater. Some boatmen who worked with him found him all too human, however, and launched a counter-campaign of vitriol that outlasted Nevills by many years."

"Now editor Roy Webb presents Nevills not through the publicists' eyes, nor those of his detractors, but through Nevills's own, in the form of his river journals." "In these pages, Nevills shares his fears, his frustrations, his failings, but also his utter joy in the beauty and excitement of the river and his drive to share it with the world. In these pioneering whitewater adventures we witness the birth of one of America's fastest growing outdoor pastimes."--Jacket.