Riverman: A magical, quixotic quest to save the world from itself.

by Mark Seghers

The world knows New Orleans for its cuisine, music, and corruption, its wetlands and unique traditions. It is less well-known as the cultural capital of Cancer Alley and of a region rapidly eroding into the Gulf of Mexico, one football field an hour. Part elegy, part magical quest, Riverman tells the tale of one man's mission to save what he sees as the epicenter of everything wrong with America, and how he drags his friend along for the ride. More than a Louisiana yarn, the novel tugs at old themes – Gilgamesh, Arthurian sagas, Don Quixote, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" – and explores the basic human desires to love and strive, to overcome grief, to affect the world, to be remembered.

405 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2020

About the author

Born and raised in South Louisiana, Mark has traveled, lived and worked around the world. He graduated from the School of Journalism, University of Missouri, and from the law school of Loyola University in New Orleans. In order to support his fiction habit, he has worked as a Mississippi River deckhand, bar tender, grass cutter, journalist, teacher and attorney. He currently lives about an hour north of New Orleans. Like Streams In Sand is his first novel.

Reviews

[Missy Hanemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riverman is a great novel!!

This is a novel for fiction lovers who also love great literature. It addresses modern themes around self-satisfied democracy and the tendency of people toward venality and self-indulgence. But...there is the exceptional one who strives to help others. Seghers’ Haji is like Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, or like Broadway’s Don Quixote rather than Cervantes’.

[Rose Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The River Runs Deep
This mystical journey is about overcoming adversity and finding the meaning of life on the banks of the Mississippi. Mr. Seghers brings to life characters you will only find working and living on the river. These colorful characters provide stories of Southern Louisiana - a place the author truly loves! The book's personalities tie into all that is right and wrong on the Mississippi river. One has made it his mission to preserve the river and its way of life.