For her first book, noted Vashon Island writer and editor Mary Bruno—whose credentials range from the local (Seattle Weekly) to national news organizations, and working bases from New York to Seattle—has written about the river she grew up knowing—and fearing: New Jersey's Passaic. An American River: From Paradise to Superfund, Afloat on New Jersey's Passaic (DeWitt Press) is beautiful, eloquent testimony to a river and what is was, what it is, what it might again be. "An intricate and satisfying braid of memoir, history, science, nature writing, and acute social observations. Laying strand on strand, Mary Bruno brings the Passaic River to extraordinarily vivid life on the page. It's not, I think, too great a stretch to say that it holds its own on the shelf alongside Walden, Silent Spring, and A Sand County Almanac." - Jonathan Raban.