Three months after a family vacation in Costa Rica ends in tragedy when two fellow rafters die on the flooded Rio ReventazOn, John Lane sets out with friends from his own backyard in upcountry South Carolina to calm his nerves and to paddle to the sea.

Like Huck Finn, Lane sees a river journey as a portal to change, but unlike Twain's character, Lane isn't escaping. He's getting intimate with the river that flows right past his home in the Spartanburg suburbs. Lane's three-hundred-mile float trip takes him down the Broad River and into Lake Marion before continuing down the Santee...