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n All My Rivers Are Gone, Katie Lee, an aspiring, young Hollywood
performer in the 1950s, falls suddenly, unexpectedly, passionately
in love. Not with a man, nor even a woman, but with a place: Glen
Canyon, on the Colorado River. When childhood friend Tad Nichols
invites her on a Grand Canyon trip, she is smitten by the river.
But it is another year before she meets her true love, as she floats
the San Juan River and enters Glen Canyon. With a combination of
contemporary narrative and journals of her many expeditions, Katie
takes us through the initial flush of first love, to an infatuation
overwhelming her mind and body, and on to the inevitable heartbreak
as Glen Canyon is snuffed out before her eyes by Glen Canyon Dam.
As she looks on helplessly, the reservoir rises, killing her beloved
river canyon by sacred canyon, mile by irreplaceable mile. Curiosity,
love, wonderment, and delight; foreboding, disbelief, horror, fury;
finally sorrow, heartbreak and a conviction to neither forgive nor
forget, keep this love story moving, much as it has kept Katie vibrantly
alive when others her age have faded or passed on. In Glen Canyon,
Katie Lee found her love requited, found a peace and perspective
she had lost in her other life in the limelight. As its end approached,
Katie vowed to memorize and keep the dying Canyon within her, resolutely
returning to its deathbed again and again during its final days.
She has remained true to her love‹her rage has simmered for some
forty years. In All My Rivers Are Gone, she has reconjured the heart
of the canyon country, complete with its subtleties of light, its
sensual forms, its erotic canyon sinuousities, down to the giggling,
gurgling, sighing voice of the river itself. For those of us too
young to have known the Glen, she paints a vivid and irresistible
portrait of her lover. And it is only through this meticulous recreation
of the Glen as a living, breathing entity that we are able to share
her outrage and horror in its needless death‹the deliberate drowning
of an innocent Canyon, the pointless crucifixion of a gentle, loving,
and magical river. Now Katie, a devout Pagan, and her audience await,
like Christians awaiting their entombed Christ, for the rolling
back of the stone, the voiding of Glen Canyon Dam, the resurrection
of what was and will once again be, the salvation of the human soul.
Brad Dimock
Katie is offering a 10% discount to GCRG members:
Send a check or e-mail her (katydid@verdenet.com) and she¹ll invoice
you. Signatures available on request. Katie has also released two
cd¹s‹one of river songs, the other of book readings interspersed
with songs. Serena Supplee¹s artwork is enough to make you buy all
three. Hardcover book $32 ppd. ($28.80 to members) Soft cover book
$20 ppd. ($18.00 to members) Cd¹s 18 ppd. ($16.20 to members) Katydid
Books & Music Box 395 Jerome, az 86331
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