The River Queen: A Memoir

by Mary Morris

This story of a middle-aged woman's odyssey down the Mississippi River is a funny, beautifully written, and poignant tale of a journey that transforms a life
In fall 2005 acclaimed travel writer Mary Morris set off down the Mississippi in a battered old houseboat called the River Queen, with two river rats named Tom and Jerry--and a rat terrier, named Samantha Jean, who hated her. It was a time of emotional turmoil for Morris. Her father had just died; her daughter was leaving home; life was changing all around her. It was then she decided to return to the Midwest where she was from, to the river she remembered, where her father had played jazz piano in tiny towns.
Morris describes living like a pirate and surviving a tornado. Because of Katrina, oil prices, and drought, the river was often empty--a ghost river--and Morris experienced it as Joliet and Marquette had four hundred years earlier. As she learned to pilot her beloved River Queen without running aground and made peace with Samantha Jean, Morris got her groove back, reconnecting to her past. More important, she came away with her best book, a bittersweet travel tale told in the very real voice of a smart, sad, funny, gutsy, and absolutely appealing woman.

Genres: Memoir, Travel, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Womens

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

I was born in Chicago and, though I have lived in New York for many years, my roots are still in the Midwest and many of my stories are set there. As a writer my closest influences are Willa Cather and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I travel as much as I can and travel fuels everything I do. When I travel, I keep extensive journals which are handwritten and include watercolors, collage as well as text. All my writing begins in these journals. I tend to move between fiction and nonfiction. I spent seventeen years working on my last novel, The Jazz Palace. I think I learned a lot writing that book because the next one only took three years., Gateway to the Moon. Gateway which will be out in March 2018 is historical fiction about the secret Jews of New Mexico. I am also working on my fifth travel memoir about my travels alone. This one is about looking for tigers.

Reviews

[Khris Sellin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morris is at a point in her life where she feels a little unmoored, after the death of her father and her daughter's departure for college. She's always thought about hitching a ride on a boat down the Mississippi and decides this is as good a time as any. She meets two guys -- Tom and Jerry (yes, really) -- who are taking a houseboat down the river, and they agree to let her tag along with them (and Samantha Jean, Tom's rat terrier).
This is a bit of a return to her roots, as she was raised in the Midwest but now lives in the Northeast. She's also hoping to find pieces of her father's history along the way -- places he lived and worked long before she was in the picture. As we follow her lazy journey down the river, we learn about her complicated relationship with her father. There's much for her to reflect on as she makes her way down through seeming ghost towns along the way. And a lot of time to reflect since there isn't much going on in any of the places they stop along the way (except for Hannibal, birthplace of Mark Twain, which sounds garish). This was 2005, and Katrina had just hit as she was starting her journey, so that emptied out the river a bit. Not sure if those towns were affected by the hurricane or had already lost their shine long before then.
This was an easy read, although for the most part nothing much happens, save for a big storm toward the beginning of the trip. It's just nice to read about someone taking off somewhere, anywhere, right now.

[Rusty Henrichsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a travel/finding-self book by a travel book author. Her father died - he had spent a small part of his on the Mississippi, so she is drawn to do a journey down the river in a houseboat. I rated it only three stars because of the extent of the self-examination, self-discovery aspect of the book. I was expecting more travel and thoughts on the people met and places visited.

She visited many of the same places that Georgia and I did this last spring and has many of the same thoughts concerning these towns and territory - namely that most of the little towns are mere shells of their former selves. She has a little different perspective since she was on the river and we were on the roads and able to get to the town centers a little easier.

I will question her grasp of reality since her description of Nauvoo and Joseph Smith are not just a bit incorrect. Makes me wonder if some of the other things she reports may be just as poorly researched.

I found her description of traveling through the locks interesting and fairly exciting - a small boat in the lock with a giant tug and barge makes for a real adventure. She describes many interesting folks met along the way including one "sorcerer." You don't get to meet a sorcerer every day. Her desire for warm showers and hot meals cooked by others leads her into many adventures off the water.

A quote or two:
Speaking of her father's death at age 102, "I never spoke to my mother that night, but I knew that she never shed a tear. She had reasons, I suppose, for being bitter. He had sold buildings [at too low a price:] he shouldn't have sold. They hadn't shared a bedroom in thirty years. He never took her anywhere. Once I asked her if it was his temper that had ruined the marriage for her and she said, 'No, it was his indifference.'"

Speaking of Bix Beiderbecke, a white blues iconoclast, "His parents believed that music was for church and community gatherings and they sent him to the Lake Forest Academy...so Bix could get some discipline and a good education. Instead, Bix got his education on the South Side of Chicago, where he went night after night to listen and blow on his [trumpet:]. He started recording and, dutifully, he sent his records to his parents. A few years later when he was dying of alcoholism, Bix returned to his family's home. He found all of his records in a closet. They had never been opened."

This book is a worthwhile read, whether looking for the travel aspect or the introspection aspect. It has good humor. It has grand scenery. It has deep thinking. It has many good things.

[Annie Carrott Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't let only 3 stars dissuade you from reading this book about a delightful cruise on a house boat down the mighty Mississippi! At first, I thought it was a bit contrived to write a book about this journey. But it ended up being so much more! The author delved into her past life and that of her father and it was woven quite nicely into the telling of life on the river. Not to mention the fact that she wrote about stopping in Quincy (my hometown) and Hannibal (where I often visited the Cave)! The only downside was that it was a bit boring in spots.
(Thanks to my cousin, Julie, who let me peruse her bookshelf in Seattle and pick a book to take with me on the journey home...!)

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my kind of book - mostly about traveling, on a boat down the Mississipi, (which I will probably never do) with descriptions of people met and towns toured along the way. I was impressed with Morris' willingness to take a trip with two guys she didn't know, on a boat, when she knew nothing about boats, or rivers. It was kind of a jump off the bridge & hope there are not rocks down there...more adventuresome than most people I know. Her stories of her farher are a reminder that our parents are always with us and it is sometimes hard to accept who they really are.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good memoir of the author spending time on a river boat on the Mississippi River

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the fall of 2005, Mary Morris set off down the Mississippi in a battered old house boat called the River Queen. Actually, it's name was the Friend Ship, but it was built by the River Queen company. She traveled with two guides, Tom and Jerry and a rat terrier named Samatha Jean (who was recovering from breast cancer). Morris was at a turning point in her life--her father had just died at 102 and her daughter had just left home for college. In this memoir, Morris returns to the Midwest where she was raised (Chicago) and the river about which her father told so many stories. Morris makes her trip down the Mississippi in the weeks just after Hurricane Katrina and she visited a number of river towns that had been important in her father's life. During the slow journey, Morris reflects on the history of the area, the character of her father (who was often angry and abusive), and the relationships that she has experienced in her life. During the journey, Morris learned to navigate the boat on the river, and, perhaps, how to better approach the next phase of her life. I enjoyed this book. I'm not sure that I would want to travel with Mary Morris, but I certainly liked hearing about her trip.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished a short trip on the Mississippi River so I read this book to see how my experience compared to Mary's but I was in the lap of luxury compared to her trip. I found that the changes in the river towns showed progress and restoration rather than the decay and sadness that she saw. I loved Dubuque and felt badly that Mary did not experience the upbeat town that I did. Her book took place in 2005 and now in 2017 there has been much improvement. I enjoyed reading her memoir about her parents and her life interspersed with the river's life,

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it! It made me want to ride the river as she did in the book.

[Thebestdogmom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It was a true adventure but mostly a passage towards healing after the loss of the authors father.

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still not entirely clear as to who owns the River Queen, aka the good ship Friend Ship.

I thought at first that it must be Mary Morris, since she begins the book with a search for a boat she can afford. No kidding. On page 18 she writes, "This seemed like a boat I could afford. Definitely within my budget."

After extensive cleanup and repair to the River Queen/Friend Ship, Mary and her river pilots, Jerry and Tom (and Tom's dog, Samantha Jean), begin their journey down the Mississippi River, during which Mary covers the expenses for fuel and, I think (?), also for the further sporadic repairs which the old boat sometimes requires, which reinforces my misconception that it is she who owns the boat.

I am apparently wrong because at the end of Mary's part of the journey, she leaves the Friend Ship with Jerry still in residence, so it must all along have been his boat. Why she paid his expenses for moving his boat downriver, I do not know. Seems like Jerry got a good deal.

I'm missing something somewhere. Oh well, The River Queen was an entertaining read. I'm sorry about the dad. Grieving a volatile father that you both feared and loved is indeed very complicated.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Morris finds a man with a "River Queen" 47 ft houseboat (twin gas Chrysler engines) to take her down the Mississippi from LaCrosse, to the Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River. Tom and his dog come along - Tom is good at maintaining the engines, and is also a pilot/captain. We ease down the river, about 8 mph including the push from the downstream current. We lock through the lock and dams. And Mary tells about her father....
Pretty good book, and we were about to travel on the lower Mississippi.

[John Addiego · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful journey down the Missippi on a somewhat decrepit houseboat, tracing family and national history, risking disaster from weather and currents, and giving the reader vivid images of the beauty and banality of the heartland of the country. There's a sense of yearning and open-heartedness that accompanies this personal journey, and some sweet reflections on Mark Twain, Joliet and Marquette, and the riverine heart of our country.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sleepy book with heart. I bought this book at my local library because not only do I share the author's last name, but I saw my husband's family name when I opened the book and the pages fell open to it. The story was winding, just like the river. But like the author, I am glad I made the journey.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up from the "river" section of a used book store. I'm always in for a good memoir and enjoyed the first hand look at going down the Mississippi on a houseboat and the musings on her father's long life.

[Penny's Preferences · Rating 1 out of 5]

It felt like she sold this idea, before thinking it through. Then had to force her way through writing it. I never stop reading a book once I started, but I had to on this one. it was too painful.

[Shaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good memoir ….a little slow in spots…but that’s the only way it could be if you are slowly floating down a River!! Badly wanted at least one picture of Tom, Jerry and Samantha!!!!

[Cassara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slow moving book like the river itself. All about the journey.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few years ago, I went to visit my grandfather in Wisconsin. While there, my grandfather introduced me to his friend, Jerry. Jerry was a really kind man who had a few houseboats, and we got to tour one of them. Jerry told me a story about how an author lady had asked him to take her on a trip down the Mississippi so she could write a book about it. Not too long after I returned home, my grandfather mailed me this book.

I didn't have many expectations for this book (there have been a couple times when the book-by-someone-I-kind-of-know has turned out to be not so great), and I enjoyed the read much more because of that.

I wouldn't say this book was life-changing or riveting, but it was a good tale. I'm glad that Mary and Jerry and Tom (and Samantha Jean!) took that journey down the Mississippi. I think Mary learned a bit more about herself and her father, and that made the trip worth it. Being the writing-snob that I am, I would have done a couple things differently as far as storytelling goes, but it wasn't my story to tell.

Overall, a good read.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the idea of traveling by houseboat. I've wanted to do this myself for a long time. So this book was very appealing to me. It was even more interesting because I'm very familiar with a lot of the towns mentioned in the book. What I didn't like about the book was the attitude of the author. She came from New York and had a hoity-toity superior attitude over everyone. No wonder the dog hated her.
Her low opinion of Hannibal and the people there was especially irritating. I wanted to read how people and cultures are different across the country, not how lacking and inferior they are to Mary Morris.
She was exploring river towns after all-probably the opposite life style of New York. The book would have been better,and she probably would have gotten a better understanding of the Midwest, if she would have tried to go with the flow and seen and appreciated these river towns and the people in them for what they are instead of looking down on them because they were not what she was used to.
I liked Tom and Jerry, the two guys she sailed with . Tom was kind of quirky but he seemed very respectful of Jerry who was the captain of the boat. Mary wasn't always so respectful.
I liked how she tied her Dad's story in with her trip. He had lived on the Mississippi years ago. Even though he was 102 and had died recently she showed the good along with the bad concerning him.
It was an interesting journey but I probably won't read anything else by Mary Morris.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one those church-basement-used-book-sale purchases that I bought years ago and then never read until now. It pleasantly surprised me. Memoirs and travel stories are two of my favorite types of books, so this was right up my alley. I enjoyed the story; Morris does a good job of making you feel like you're right there. Her personality certainly comes out through her writing, too; you feel her emotions right along with her: her wonder, her annoyances, her trepidation. She did a good job of making Tom and Jerry come alive, too. I finished the book wanting to meet them and go on my own boat trip with them.
I thought this was a really intriguing profile of the Mississippi as it is now. I've lived almost my entire life on the Miss but haven't seen it south of Minnesota. This book just strengthened my desire to travel the Miss on down--whether upon it or beside it, but it also gave me a good chance to travel the upper half in my imagination, bringing alive life on the river.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to re-read this book because of our trip down the Great River Road along the Mississippi. However, we did the southern part and this book recounts a northern journey. That might be a plan for us next year. However, Morris' account of Nauvoo, Hannibal, Cairo and St. Louis did not encourage me to follow through. The towns were either deserted or tourist meccas.

This is an odd book in some ways. Morris is deeply mourning the death of her 102 year old father and she incorporates that into her daily account of her journey. I give her much credit for her willingness to tolerate discomfort and lack of privacy and some danger to follow her dream of a river journey. I liked her descriptions of her boatmates and some of the people she met at marinas and bars.

It was hard for me to understand her extreme and dramatic grief for a parent who was very old and whose quality of life was not so good any more.

[R J Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the death of her Father and her only child going off to college, Mary Morris is floundering. She needs to ground herself, to return to the river of her youth as well as the river that gave birth to many of her Father's stories. "The River Queen" is about Mary's meandering trip down the Mississippi River, accompanied by Tom and Jerry, the engineer and the captain of the Friend Ship, the houseboat they travel aboard. The trip allows Mary a chance deal with her loss. Along the way she learns to pilot the boat and [almost] tie knots. She faces a tornado, survives a hoard of Mayflies, camps out on a beach, and visits the places of her father's life. By the end of the trip, Mary comes to terms with her grief and is able to look ahead. The end of the book has Mary piloting the Friend Ship just as she will be able to take control of her life.

[ellen middlebrook herron · Rating 3 out of 5]

i really, really wanted to love this book. i'm doing research on the mississippi for a project, and i thought this would be a fantastic modern-day account of traveling down the river. but i ended up hating the author. i suppose she could be awarded points for being honest about who she is, in all of her complaining, whiny, self-absorbed, narcissistic glory, but really it just made me hate her. and her personality colored her observations of the river so much that i ended up not even caring all that much about it.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was handed to me at a Historical Society meeting. The pilot of the ramshackle houseboat on which the author traveled grew up in Holmen, the son of one of our members. It a familiar story: a writer coming to terms with the death of a parent while exploring: river, (hawk), personal history. She boards in La Crosse, Wisconsin, just after Katrina hits New Orleans. The river is the main character, beautiful and treacherous. The human life along its banks seemed pretty dismal in general. I felt it ran out of oomph and interest as they progressed.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Travelogue of a trip down the Mississippi River in a house boat. The author's 102 year old father has just died and her daughter has gone off to college. This is a trip of self discovery. However, I don't think she discovered anything. At least she didn't share it with us. Travelogue, not memoir. Nothing revealed, not much inner landscape explored, and certainly not a lyrical look at the river. It felt like all she did was complain.

[Coleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living close to the Ohio River, I've always wanted to take a long boat ride down to the Mississippi-and as a long ago English teacher with years of teaching Huck Finn- I've daydreamed about floating in freedom down the Mississippi.
Thanks to Morris, I lived vicariously on the river with her as she learns how to control the boat and how to face the memories of her father who lived by the river.

[Desiree · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my opinion, a bit boring. I can't believe some of the quotes from other authors on the book saying it was one of the best books they're read! They must have a dreadfully boring life. Maybe I was disappointed in this b/c I've read of more adventurous travelers. Didn't keep my interest or motivate me to read any more of her travel stories.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was underwhelmed. Morris was ill-prepared [in every way] for this trip in a houseboat along the Upper Mississippi. She spends a lot of time processing/mourning the death of her 102-year-old father and her daughter's going to college. I wanted to tell her to get over it. Her complaints and condescension overshadowed any beauty in writing, which was minimal anyway. No breath-taking prose.

[Karla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather tiring to read a travel book that mostly consists of complaints about traveling conditions, tourist traps, and the unenlightened people of the midwest. I guess the author prefers New York, where she is kicked in the stomach by a stranger while walking down the street and needs to take drugs to sleep.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have loved this author's travel narratives. Her book 'Beijing to Berlin', and 'Nothing to Declare' were wonderful journals.

This book is set as she sets off from La Crosse WI down the Mississippi River in a houseboat. Its a recount of the experience along the way, the port cities, the solitude on the river, introspection.