Is a River Alive?: A Journey with Water

A beautiful, wild exploration of an ancient idea: that rivers are living participants in a living world." —MERLIN SHELDRAKE, bestselling author of Entangled Life

From the bestselling author of Underland and "the great nature writer . . . of this generation" (WSJ), a revelatory book that transforms how we imagine rivers—and life itself.

Hailed in the New York Times as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,” Robert Macfarlane brings us a profound work of travel writing, reportage and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.

Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled, respectively, by mining, pollution and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk-stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, who flows through his own years and days.

Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is A River Alive? is a book that will open hearts, challenge perspectives and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.