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On the Water: Discovering America in a Rowboat Nathaniel Stone, Broadway Books, 323 pages, $32.95 What kind of person undertakes a 9,600-kilometre journey from New York to New Orleans in a rowboat? That's right -- a rowboat. No sail. No motor. A five-metre piece of fibreglass powered solely by muscle and determination.

It doesn't sound like the kind of odyssey undertaken by a regular Joe working a desk job. Make that a regular Joe working a desk job who has no rowing experience or familiarity with the water.

But that's exactly who Nathaniel Stone was before he pushed off from a Brooklyn dock in April, 1999, armed with little more than a tent, a few supplies and some jars of peanut butter.

After working a job where the "days were becoming forgettable; they blended too quickly in memory," Mr. Stone decided to chuck it all to traverse a route originally attempted by Howard Blackburn, a 19th-century Gloucester fisherman, who imagined the eastern United States as an island. Mr. Stone proved the feasibility of Mr. Blackburn's idea by using a combination of waterways. He travelled up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the mighty Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and back up the eastern seaboard.

Mr. Stone's debut novel, On the Water,is a faithful diary of this tale of endurance and self-discovery. Along his travels, he came across colourful residents who invited him into their homes to share supper, have a shower or rest for a few hours. Mr. Stone's thoughtful conversations with these strangers offer a glimpse into Americans' thoughts about modernity's effect on the waterways.

But it is the quieter moments, when Mr. Stone is pulling his oars against the dark water, that offer the reader an appreciation of the simplicity of life on the water. He compares the pure pleasure of rowing with that of a "bicycling commuter [who]has a right to feel smug -- whether he does or not -- as he is passed by a fuming stream of cars, for he is doing virtually no harm, and happiness invariably extends from his routine work."

On the Water is an engaging account of an intrepid adventure undertaken by a person determined to lead a conscious life. Mr. Stone was asked by several people he encountered whether this was a journey to find himself.

"The answer was yes. Not that I was lost or wayward. Perhaps I was out to find more of myself. Or else just to be on the water, alone within the natural world from which, or within which, we've emerged."

Mr. Stone's account should serve as an inspiration to those regular Joes who have always wanted to climb the Alps, hike across the Sahara or sail the Pacific in an effort to find more of themselves.

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