Waterborne » (Reprint)

Bruce Murkoff was born in 1953, spent many years in California and now lives in Stone Ridge, New York.  

When Filius Poe sets out for Boulder City, the country is in the grips of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration in its final days. Filius, a young engineer from Wisconsin with a number of dams under his belt, has secured a job helping to tame the mighty Colorado and hopes the sheer scale of the era's greatest engineering feat will distract him from recent, devastating losses. Meanwhile, Lena and Burr McCardell, a young mother and son fleeing a shocking betrayal, and Lew Beck, a diminutive fighter with a short fuse to match his stature—as well as thousands of other workers–have embarked upon similar pilgrimages to "the only city in America where everyone has a job." Soon, the lives of these troubled souls have intersected, offering up both the promise of second chance at love and the threat of shocking violence and wrath.

Bruce Markuff, the literary equivalent of a master river guide, navigates the stories of these characters and more to offer a breathtaking vista of history and humanity.

The Washington Post

Waterborne is a formidable achievement, an engrossing story, masterfully told -- and the dam is only a small part of it … This is the sort of writing that is a pleasure to read even when the technical details are lost on a layman. For my money, Murkoff's prose is even more lyrical and evocative than Charles Frazier's in Cold Mountain, and his subjects are infinitely more diverse. — Kevin Baker