Dead Man's Rapids

William Durbin, Barbara Durbin

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781452954554

When 13-year-old Ben Ward left school to work with his Pa in a logging camp, a winter of peeling potatoes and setting tables wasn’t the adventure he had in mind. Still, come spring, he signs up for the log drive with his friend Nevers, wishing the head cook on the wanigan (the floating cook shack) could be someone other than his crabby Pa. Fate, with a wink, complies, and Pa quits—only to be replaced by someone far worse: Pete Sardman, aka Old Sard, a cantankerous character complete with a greasy apron, an eye patch, one deaf ear, and plenty to say.

Luckily, there’s also the rest of the crew—a colorful, sometimes outrageous company of men. Together Ben and Nevers endure freezing weather, dangerous rapids, logjams, storms and floods, and a number of gripping tall tales, along the way learning about logging on the river and a whole lot more about life.

Taking up where Blackwater Ben left off, Dead Man’s Rapids returns to the north woods of Minnesota in the late nineteenth century, and with warmth, humor, and attention to historical detail engages readers both young and old.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. Where the Rivers Run North
• 2. Hungry Mike and the Doubleheader
• 3. Broke and Busted
• 4. Too Late for the Man Catcher
• 5. Up in Smoke
• 6. Old Sard
• 7. The Long Good-Bye
• 8. Mischbrot
• 9. Under an Open Sky
• 10. Finger Stew
• 11. The Long Knife
• 12. A Dose of This and a Dose of That
• 13. Call Him Lucky
• 14. The Mystery of the Sugar Bowl
• 15. The Sweepers
• 16. Now You See It, Now You Don’t
• 17. Better Than an Empty Pot
• 18. Dead Man’s Rapids
• 19. Blood and Iron
• 20. A Wassel Tale
• 21. A Hand in the Bush
• 22. I Wish I May, I Wish I Might
• 23. One Shoe Off and One Shoe On
• 24. Dick Goes Fishing
• 25. The Key Log
• 26. Devil Mouse
• 27. The Sluice Gate
• 28. Of Toads and Tar Buckets
• 29. If Wishes Were Horses
• 30. Dead and Downed
• 31. The Widow Johnson
• 32. The Sound of Silence
• 33. Alles Hat Ein Ende
• 34. Stewed Prunes and Pickle Pie
• 35. The Wiener War
• 36. The Last Rapids
• 37. A Pair of Flashing Eyes
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments