Canoeing with Jose by Jon Lurie
After years of admiring the journey described in Eric Arnold Sevareid’s 1935 classic account, Canoeing with the Cree, Lurie invites José to join him in retracing Sevareid’s route and embarking on a mythic two thousand-mile paddle from Breckenridge, Minnesota, to the Hudson Bay. Faced with plagues of mosquitoes, extreme weather, suspicious law enforcement officers, tricky border crossings, and José’s preference for Kanye West over the great outdoors, the journey becomes an odyssey of self-discovery. Acknowledging the erased native histories that Sevareid’s prejudicial account could not perceive, and written in gritty, honest prose, Canoeing with José is a remarkable journey.