A friend loaned this book to me by simply stating, "I think you'll enjoy this." Little did he know, but Ricochet River was like a walk down memory lane for me. Although I didn't live in the town where this adventure takes place, I did spend time in and around it doing similar things as the characters in the book - fishing, rafting, movies and other small-town high school fun. Wade befriends Jessie the Indian from Celilo and Jessie teaches him new ways to look at the world. Lorna, Wades girlfriend is smarter than everyone as she can see that they are in a nowhere town destined to go nowhere. Together, they each find their own way out. Robin Cody acurately depicts the flora and fauna of small milltown life on the western slope of Oregon's Cascade mountains. Cody's depiction is so acurate that I wonder if we met somewhere along the Ricochet River. Highly entertaining!!!

Ricochet River depicts life in a logging community. The characters Lorna, Wade, and Jesse are thrown about in an ever-changing world. The story takes place during the 1960's in a town called Calamus, where logging is the main economic industry. The characters are also defining parts of the book. The author, Robin Cody, gives each character his or her special part in the book. He shows how characters like Lorna and Wade can have their whole outlooks changed in a matter of a New York second by newcomers like Jesse. Jesse adds the cream filling to the pie since he relates traditional Indian stories to life and is the one who makes up a major part of the conflict.
With large amounts of symbolism, hard thinking is required for a better understanding of this story. The main theme of the book, which is symbolized on the cover, is the relationship between the life of a fish and the life of a human. Even if you've never seen the Columbia River in all her glory, or ever been caught alone in a forest when the sun floods through the leaves, reading this book will give a sense of those experiences. This is what the book does; it makes little things like fish, into extremely important objects that are essential for life.

Simply put, Ricochet River is quite possibly the best or close to the best book I've ever read. Wade and his girlfriend, Lorna, live in a small logging town in Oregon. A town full of people that are always interested in other people's businesses. It really gets them down. The story only gets started when they meet Jesse, an Indian kid from out of town. Jesse is very adventurous and acts on impulse. One of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much is because the author, Robin Cody, did an excellent job of describing an giving you a great picture of what he was writing about. His depictions made you feel like you were there on the river with the mist spraying your face. He also tells the story of three friends trying to get out of the vice grip that the town has on them with so much voice that you can't put the book down. This book makes you want to leave the boring town that you are in and take off towards the river. The thrill of getting away and letting the river lead you is present in this book. I also liked this book because it was written with honesty. The book protrays three kids that you swear were in your class the other day. This book is a must read. Any book that keeps you up at night reading it is excellent. The only downfall of this book is that it doesn't have a sequel. Although, a sequal would requir a new character that has some experience in the sport tree topping.;]

It's obvious from Voyage of a Summer Sun that Robin Cody loves the wilderness and the river, but he does an excellent job of presenting its importance without sliding very far into environmentalism per se, by which I mean he also shows the people and projects that have tampered with the Columbia, sometimes drastically, and he shows them with a minimum of slant.

Cody's prose is easy to read, and his focus shifts pleasantly between the people he meets, the river itself, the issues surrounding it, and the workings of the canoe trip.

The real problem I see is that Cody took his trip in 1990. Some of his information, obviously, is still solid, but in other areas, Voyage is getting dated. There's been a whole new round of power generation arguments, salmon policy changes, and weather shifts since then. The Hanford tank farms, in particular, have completed a major cleanup project, and a lot of the menacing toxic-waste threats he announces have been solved, softened, or shown to be less dangerous than thought. So it's a good book, but you have to read it with its age in mind.

Of the hundreds of books I have on the Pacific Northwest, this is easily one of my favorites. Aside from Robin Cody simply being an excellent writer, enjoyable to read, easy to follow, this book specifically invokes a true sense of place of the Columbia. It has a flavor of the classic Farthest Frontier, adventure, outdoors, wide open Northwest in the spirit of David Thompson, Theodore Winthrop, James Swan and the like (not to mention Lewis & Clark). Robin Cody evokes a sense of place right up there with the best like Stewart Holbrook, Murray Morgan, Ivan Doig, etc. The books touches on places here and there along the Columbia giving the reader a good feel for not only the Columbia of today, but in the past, before the Damns! Man thinks he's "tamed" the Columbia, but the majesty & power is still there and Cody conveys some of it. The main problem with the book is that it is much too short, I wanted more - I'd like to see the full journal of his travels. You couch potatoes (ok me too) dont really understand what it really means to spend nearly 3 months and 1200 miles in a itsy bitsy canoe on one of the world's biggest river. Clearly the mighty Columbia spoke during his journey, Cody listened well, and did a good job telling us about what the River said. A must read, along with the similar flavored The Good Rain by Timothy Egan.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Cody's observations on the impact of technical advancement on an ecosystem were candid and not overly political or strident. This would be an excellent book for students of atmospheric and earth sciences. Robin Cody is a gifted story teller and narrator.