Risking the Rapids

Noted writer Irene O'Garden grew up in what seemed like the perfect American Midwestern family. Behind the scenes, however, it was anything but. In Risking the Rapids O’Garden's revelatory account tells us of shocking cruelty, narcissism, neglect and the damage done to children of alcoholics. From her traumatic girlhood to her healing wilderness journey at age 62, O’Garden's writing will grip you and hold you fast to this extraordinary story.

Risking the Rapids opens with the shocking death of O’Garden’s problematic older brother in 2014. His early passing prompted her and other family members to seek emotional closure with him and their family past by journeying through the remotest area in the lower forty-eight, Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. What was described as a genial river “float” became a harrowing whitewater experience. That chronicle is woven with the story of her upbringing in a repressed mid-century Midwest Catholic household with six other siblings, a TV-personality father, an icy mother and rivers of martinis. And surprising love. It’s the kind of absorbing literary journey readers relish.