Expressman and the Detective Book

Occasionally I find one, hidden among the travel section at my local public library. A jewel of a book about the destination I am researching. More than a travel guide, a book that just doesn't fit in any other category. Usually a first hand account about travel within an area. I like to think, if they weren't so famous, this is where you would find the journals of the travels of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark up the Missouri River, or the memoirs of Audubon as he painted birds across the southern States.

This time I found the personal journal of a man that travels the length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca, Minnesota to his home in New Orleans, Louisiana on a homemade river craft. He undertakes the journey to heal himself of the mental wounds he suffered during the first Gulf War of the 1990s and to reconcile his feelings about our present involvement in the Middle East.

Mark Ericksen has a natural no nonsense, but engaging style of writing that is both stark and fruitful. Perhaps a cross between Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. However, it is not his style, but what he has to say that is of interest. As he travels down the Mississippi he describes his river journey, interlaced with his journey to reconcile his experience with war and the soldiers that must fight.

I recommend this book to those of us that find pride in our nation but somehow feel we have lost our way.