Buzz Holmstrom is the subject of our popular biography, The Doing of the Thing. It was Holmstrom's brilliance as a boat designer and builder, and his pioneering solo runs down the great rivers of America, that first brought him national attention. But it is his humble and insightful prose that sets him apart from the chest-thumping men of his day and brings him into the modern heart.
Every Rapid Speaks Plainly brings together his river journals from 1936, '37, and '38, along with letters he wrote home, and the 1938 accounts of his companions. Brad Dimock painstakingly transcribed each of these from the original pocket notebooks, which were often scribbled in pencil, and smudged from repeated dousings.
For those who have read The Doing of the Thing and want to know Holmstrom better, or for those who simply want to follow a brilliant man, through his own words, as he moves uneasily from the age of wilderness expeditions to the more modern commercialized era, Every Rapid Speaks Plainly will speak to you.
Brad Dimock was born in Ithaca, New York and received a Bachelor of Arts from Prescott College in 1971. He spent much of the next three and a half decades as a boatman in Grand Canyon and rivers throughout the world.
Fearful of real work, he began writing in the mid-1990s.
This book was an outgrowth of his work on The Doing of the Thing, wherein he spent months transcribing Buzz Holmstrom's journals in order to more fully understand his trips.
Gary Ladd photo
