The Very Hard Way

Dimock has done a truly wonderful job of conveying that toughness in relationship to Loper’s life and the land that he called home. Its 456 pages that never once bog down; fast-paced whitewater reading all the way through. The way Dimock formatted the telling of the story was brilliant in that between Loper s life and legend, history, exploits, and deeds and how others perceived him, there is never a dull moment. Very impressive. Brad Dimock has done a beautiful job of making this legend accessible and human and immediate that I feel as if I knew Loper myself and mourn his passing while at the same time marveling in the fact that he was who he was and did what he did. —Joe Foster, Durango Herald

The river was found, rowed and loved by working people, the kind of folks who get scant notice in the books and bluster of the official expedition chroniclers. At last Brad Dimock has brought their hard world to the page. Meet Bert Loper, the man who knew the river and never left it. —Charles Bowden

Tough as boot leather, stubborn and indomitable, Bert Loper was a drifting, uneducated, hard-rock miner, laborer and boatman who came to know and love the rivers of the Southwest like no-one else before or since. This splendid biography, which also tells the definitive history of river-running in the Southwest, takes us down into the canyons and whitewater and shows how they brought grace and meaning to the very hard life of a very hard man. —Richard Grant (American Nomads)