Ride the River was the first book by Louis L'amour I ever read. My mom let me steal the paperback off of her bookshelf—one that steadily shrunk over the years—in elementary school, and I was instantly captivated by the story of a spirited young woman, Echo, who shot and sold game to purchase fashionable clothing and journeyed to secure a mysterious inheritance armed with her deadly aim and an Arkansas toothpick.
I dove into the Sackett family novels and some of L'amour's other novels, but none ever stuck with me quite like Echo Sackett's story. For one, I liked to pretend the small wooded areas surrounding my suburban neighborhood were the dark trails between Philadelphia and the Appalachians. Outside of imaginative outdoor rambles, the well-worn spine testified to my repeated readings of Ride the River and those of my mom before me. Although the spirited action of Echo communicated by the text drew me into the pages of this book many times, the physical image of her that stuck with me was not one L'amour wrote of Echo.
While I was home over Thanksgiving and looking through my bookshelves, I found this copy of Ride the River and instantly remembered that I drew a picture of Echo. The sketchbook survived, complete with my childhood portrait of Echo. I could blame the image of Echo taken straight from the illustration on the cover on my lack of artistic originality, but we were given edition of the novel from an extended family member. This cover image displayed a red-bonneted Echo backgrounded by a steamboat. That was not my Echo.
Ride the River remains a favorite book for the plot and the characters. But this copy matters now for the connection to my mom, and for how it was the first book I encountered this story through. It mattered to me as an elementary schooler because the image of Echo on the cover was powerful enough to inspire a colored pencil drawing of a sharp-shooting, smart heroine. While the cover of this book showed how a tall, brooding man what I found worthy of recreating was Echo and her rifle nearly taller than her.
by Anastasia Armendariz, A Library of One's Own
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