November 16, 2008 | Better than chocolate, News

So many riverboat stories talk about life from the passengers’ point of view, where the river looks safe – or at least relatively placid. Well, rivers aren’t tame, as this spring’s floods reminded us. I visited the Missouri River after the great 1995 floods swept through. Those scenes haunted me while I wrote THE RIVER DEVIL

When the time came to think about a book trailer, I wanted one which would convey the danger facing the riverboats’ crews. Men who could only travel the Missouri River by daylight because every shadow could conceal a deadly enemy. Men who balanced on drowned trees to cut them apart with axes so boats could pass, carrying desperately needed food. Boats whose round-trip voyage from St. Louis to Montana occurred only once a year and but whose lifespan was probably only 2 or 3 years before its bottom was ripped out by a drowned tree or its boiler blew up. And a river that runs so fast Lewis & Clark clocked it at a whirlpool’s pace and it’s now 500 miles shorter from the Rockies to the ocean than it was in their day…

I hope you enjoy the book trailer created by Circle of Seven Productions! I sure did.

Diane