Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways ed. by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester

Abstract

Reviewed by: Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways ed. by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester Chaney Hill Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester, eds., Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways. College Station: Texas A&M UP, 2021. 316 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. As Clayton Maxwell in “The Lower Guadalupe River: A Return to the River” reminds us, it’s “good to take into account where you are from,” and the narratives in Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester’s collection Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways do just this (264). Davis is the literary curator of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University and the editor and author of eight books. Sam L. Pfiester is chair of the Wittliff Collections Advisory Council and has authored four novels. Pfiester and Davis, having met through their work with the Wittliff collections, both feel strongly that the waterways that support the life and lifestyle of Texans should be protected. Sponsored by the Wittliff Collections Literary Series in partnership with The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, Viva Texas Rivers! carries on the work John Graves started in 1960 with Goodbye to a River to educate, safeguard, and treasure Texas’s waterways. Pfiester and Davis put together this collection to bring to life the “‘spirit of place’ for dozens of Texas rivers and streams” and to highlight the unique qualities of each waterway (xvii). The collection of short stories, novel excerpts, republished periodicals, historical records, and poems is divided by region: East Texas, Central Texas, North Texas, West Texas, and South Texas. Viva Texas Rivers! begins with an “Invocation” by Chicana writer Carmen Tafolla entitled “This River Here” and closes with a “Benediction” by poet and author Pat Mora. Pfiester and Davis include texts from a diverse selection of writers, including Texas and national literary luminaries and historical figures such as John Graves, John James Audubon, Attica Locke, Billy Lee Brammer, Pat Mora, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, J. Frank Dobie, Larry McMurtry, Elmer Kelton, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sandra Cisneros, and Américo Paredes, among others. Each section opens with a fold-out map of [End Page 425] the region by artist and mapmaker Molly O’Halloran. These maps are worthy of praise and study on their own. Featuring the major and minor tributaries of many Texas rivers and streams, the cities built along their banks, and the highways that crosshatch them, these maps assist in the place-making the collection is invested in by showing the roots and routes of Texas’s many rivers and streams. Located at the end of the book is a useful appendix of local and national river and conservation advocacy groups. This list is a valuable tool for anyone looking to get involved in cleaning, protecting, and supporting their local or national waterways. Readers will gain a deep place-based understanding of the living routes that run in and out of Texas. As a reader, I began to see and understand the waterways that have sustained me every day, sometimes without me realizing it, in new ways. As Pfiester and Davis advocate in their introduction, these writings can help us learn “how to look, and how to see” Texas rivers and streams “not just [as] our present and past, but also our future” (xviii). Viva Texas Rivers! is for lovers of waterways and environmental advocates alike. Environmental justice scholars, organizations, and policymakers will find Pfiester and Davis’s collection inspirational and may even find a template for future work. This collection is also a great companion for instructors looking to teach on subjects related to critical regionalism, the formation of regional identity, environmental justice, river advocacy, or the intersection of western and southern literature. For readers of Western American Literature, Viva Texas Rivers! will prove to be an invaluable addition to the canon of Texas literature, bioregionalism, environmental literature, and western literature. [End Page 426] Chaney Hill Rice University Copyright © 2023 Western Literature Association ...