Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River

by Max McCoy

The upper Arkansas River courses through the heart of America from its headwaters near the Continental Divide above Leadville, Colorado, to Arkansas City, just above the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Max McCoy embarked on a trip of 742 miles in search of the river's unique story. Part adventure and part reflection, steeped in the natural and cultural history of the Arkansas Valley, Elevations is McCoy’s account of that journey.

Going by kayak when he can—by Jeep, on foot, or by other means when he has to—McCoy takes us with him, navigating the Arkansas River as it reveals its nature and tests his own. Along the way, and when he isn’t battling the current for his overturned kayak; braving a frigid Christmas Eve along the river; or joining the search for a drowning victim, he steps out to explore the world beyond the river’s banks. Here for instance is Camp Amache, where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Here is Ludlow, where thirteen women and children died in a standoff between striking coal miners and the militia in 1914. Farther along we find Sand Creek, site of a massacre by US soldiers in 1864, and, uncomfortably close, Garden City, where white supremacists were charged with planning a terror attack on Somali refugees in 2016.

Whether traveling back in time, pausing in the present, or looking forward, Elevations captures the Arkansas River in its thrilling moments and placid stretches, in its natural splendor and degradation at human hands. The book shows us the river as a flowing repository of human history and, in the telling of this gifted writer, as a life-changing experience.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2018

About the author

Max McCoy is an award-winning journalist and author. He’s won awards for his reporting on unsolved murders, serial killers, and hate groups. In addition to his daily newspaper work, Max has written for publications as diverse as American Photographer, True West, and The New Territory. He’s the author of four original Indiana Jones adventures for Lucasfilm/Bantam and the novelization of the epic TNT miniseries, Into the West. His novels, including Damnation Road, have won three Spur awards from the Western Writers of America. His novels, Hellfire Canyon and Of Grave Concern, have also been named Kansas Notable Books by the state library. He's a tenured professor of journalism at Emporia State University, in east central Kansas, where he specializes in investigative reporting and nonfiction narrative. He's also director of the university’s Center for Great Plains Studies. His most recent book is Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River, from the University Press of Kansas.

Reviews

[Thomas Isern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed this work in the weekly feature, Plains Folk. Elevations is a travel narrative infused with personal discovery and social consciousness on the central plains. In at least one way it reminds me of some of the works of Ian Frazier - I mean early on I find myself grumbling and chafing, and then three-quarters through I realize there is a scheme after all, and the guy has a heart.

[John Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Max McCoy is a master of whatever writing genre that attracts him. Having read some of his Westerns and modern thrillers, I knew I was in for a thrill as McCoy explored the Arkansas River and wrote of its personal effects on his body and mind. Elevations is in part a history book, but one written as only a grand storyteller can write it. It is certainly a story of the river as it scours the earth at high altitudes in Colorado, and runs for 742 miles through Colorado and Kansas. But for the most part, the river is not the subject, but the storyline. It is what ties together historical human pathos and modern human pathos. As is true of most great stories, it is that pathos that drives its cold steel nails into our consciousness. The chill which comes from man’s inhumanity to man comes just as sharply as the sting of the icy cold water of the river at high elevations. Whereas the reader can empathize with McCoy’s in-river spills and mishaps, the reader will certainly recoil at the telling of the horrors that have been witnessed by the river and its surrounding wild and barren lands. As McCoy tells it, he felt compelled to endure the hardships of this river journey. The good news for the reader is that you don’t have to get your feet wet to join the author on his journey of adventure and historical discoveries.
Having read this book, you will never forget it.

[Mary Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less of a journey down the Arkansas than a journey thru the history that’s happened around the Ark River in CO & KS. Modern reflections on historical events. Plus some personal exploration thrown in for good measure (& good reading). Surprisingly well written. The author takes quite a few diversions but all quite interesting & mostly relevant. Very enjoyable.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an interesting mix of kayaking trips, environmental history, geology, and politics.
I ran warm and cool on different sections as the author chronicles trips along the Arkansas from near the headwaters in Colorado to its path into Oklahoma. I suppose it was the more personal parts that I struggled with yet I would want to learn of the writer's thoughts and feelings on that kind of trip. So my reaction might be more of where my head is right now. It did give me some ideas of sections I would like to paddle and I want to get associated with the Arkansas River Coalition.

[Joe Artz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because the subtitle promised an exploration of a river I'm always eager to learn more about. So much so that I missed the adjective "personal." This bias led me to find it more about the people and places along the river, and less about the river itself. The approach makes perfect sense: McCoy is a reporter, not a travel writer, and he makes this clear from the outset.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history is very interesting

[George Frazier · Rating 5 out of 5]

The definitive book on the Ark. Deeply felt, deeply researched. Classic Max McCoy.

[Linda McCune · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book about the Arkansas River, kayaking, history of Kansas-Colorado-Oklahoma-Nebraska. Great stories from a wonderful author.