THE RIVER by Peter Heller

Peter Heller knows how to tell a suspenseful adventure story.  This novel is as turbulent as its title waterway, in which two college students, Wynn and Jack, take a Canadian wilderness canoe trip.  Things start to get dicey when they spot a raging wildfire that forces them to re-evaluate their plan.  However, the fire is not the only life-threatening obstacle.  The two men add a seriously injured woman, Maia, to their party and find themselves in the crosshairs of her possibly psychopathic husband, Pierre.  Soon their leisurely paddle trip becomes a quest for survival, and their absolute trust in one another starts to erode.  Wynn, the eternal optimist, has a tough time grasping that Pierre could be lying in wait planning an ambush.  Jack, on the other hand, has a sixth sense that warns him when something is amiss, and he takes a more pragmatic approach:  Get them before they get you.  Regardless, these are two guys that you would trust with your life, and Maia has to do just that.  They manage to feed her and stitch her up, even after most of their provisions have been lost.  Their Deliverance-like nightmare had me in its clutches right up until the end, at which point the narration becomes very confusing.  Fortunately, the epilogue clarifies everything.  I think I understand why the author wrapped things up in this fashion, since a heartbreaking event basically renders everything that happens afterward relatively unimportant.  I’ve read all of Heller’s novels, and this one is second only to The Dog Stars.