28 October 2016 DEATH ON THE RIVER OF DOUBT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S AMAZON ADVENTURE by Samantha Seiple, Scholastic Press, January 2017, 224p., ISBN: 978-0-545-70916-3

“As president, Roosevelt created five national parks (doubling the previously existing number); signed the landmark Antiquities Act and used its special provisions to unilaterally create 18 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon; set aside 51 national bird sanctuaries, four national game refuges, and more than 100 million acres’ worth of national forests.”

--from PBS.org, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea: A Film by Ken Burns

“The men above pulled the wet ropes, their hands burning, while Roosevelt and the others below lifted and shoved, heaving the canoe up. Finally, the canoe was free, and the men slowly dragged it up to safety.

“The same procedure was repeated for the second canoe. It was a much-needed victory as both canoes were saved. But the adventurers quickly realized their success had come at a price.

“During the ordeal, Roosevelt had slammed his leg into a boulder, gouging his shin. As his blood oozed into the piranha-infested water, he quickly waded to the river’s bank and limped back to the campsite at the foot of the rapids.

“At first glance, the wound appeared to be minor. But the former president knew what a bloody gash to his leg really meant, especially in the unknown and unforgiving jungle.

“Roosevelt was knocking on death’s door.”

Wading into a discussion of Teddy Roosevelt can be like easing into a piranha-infested river. On the down side, there is plenty of evidence with which to indict Roosevelt as a white supremacist, racist, and imperialist. He proudly wore the mantle of progressivism, but he was elected president with the help of robber barons. His dismissal “without honor” of 167 Black infantrymen who were framed by Texan racists, in what came to be known as the Brownsville Affair, was such an injustice that it was officially reversed in 1972. And Roosevelt disseminated vile generalizations about Native Americans that reverberated for generations.

On the plus side, as Ken Burns noted in his famed PBS documentary series about the national parks, Roosevelt’s great legacy was to rescue large portions of America from destruction.

Roosevelt was a world-famous naturalist and outdoor enthusiast, so it’s not surprising that while on a tour of South America, he was offered an opportunity to participate in an expedition deep into the Amazon jungle to chart an unmapped river.

Today we are instantly connected by news coverage to people, places, and events around the globe. Many of us have Facebook “friends” in numerous countries. It’s difficult to imagine that, a hundred years ago, large swaths of the planet remained uncharted and many tribes of people had never come face-to-face with western “civilization.” But that’s what readers encounter in the breathtaking true adventure story, DEATH ON THE RIVER OF DOUBT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S AMAZON ADVENTURE.

Roosevelt came close but didn’t die on the River of Doubt. Others in the exploration party did. At one point, things got so bad that Roosevelt considered whether his son Kermit would have a better chance of survival if he, TR, continued on with the expedition...or whether the better choice would be to stay behind and die.

Knowing the opinions that Roosevelt expressed about Native Americans, I was surprised to see the positive manner in which he treated the camaradas who accompanied the expedition. All in all, TR comes off here as a reasonably sympathetic character.

In crafting this book, author Samantha Seiple pored through the papers and diaries of Theodore Roosevelt, his son Kermit, Candido Mariano de Silva Rondon, who led the expedition, and naturalist George Cherrie. The result is an exciting, sometimes terrifying, sometimes gross tale of life, death, and exploration in the days when there were still truly unknown places in the world.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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