Writing The River Seattle Author Braids Many Elements Of Columbia River Story Into A Coherent, Readable And Informative Narrative

“Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River” By William Dietrich (Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $26 U.S., $35 Canada.)

The easy way to organize a book about a region is to move chapter by chapter east to west, or north to south. And, if the author draws in a historical aspect, there’s always chronological order.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Dietrich took the more difficult route when he outlined his book “Northwest Passage.” He selected the subjects related to the Northwest’s most defining geographic feature - the Columbia River - and chapter by chapter explored the issues germane to each topic. The challenge in this method, however, is braiding the subjects into a single narrative that becomes a book. This, too, Dietrich did well.

Dietrich has vast experience writing at length about Northwest issues; as a reporter for The Seattle Times he won journalism’s coveted Pulitzer for his coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. From writing about the giant oil slick, he went on to report extensively on the old growth forest conflict and expanded on that issue in his first book, “The Final Forest.”

Fish - specifically salmon - then became the focus of Dietrich’s attention. As the science reporter for The Times, he wrote stories about Hanford and fishing and dams and agriculture - all with connections to this massive waterway. Then, the pristine upper stretches of the Columbia system touched him during rafting vacation down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. “I was struck by the sheer joy of rapids, but you could see it deteriorating near the end,” Dietrich said during an interview last month while in Spokane to read from his book.

Dietrich began reading extensively about the region and included his reading list as an 18-page bibliography in “Northwest Passage,” one of the most valuable components of the book. And the Columbia River became the focal point around which all the Northwest issues swirled.

His expertise as a reporter served Dietrich well in this project. The subjects are, as we say in the journalism business, well-reported. He understands the complexities of how the river system laps at the shores of many issues; yet he knows that riveting reading requires stories. And this is where Dietrich really rises to the surface in the pool of writers who have written about the Columbia River.

He roamed the Columbia to its source in British Columbia and the tributaries that pump billions of gallons of water into the river, talking to people who lived by the river or who have taken from it. It is these people’s stories he tells so well within the chapters that are really about complicated and interwoven issues. Yet he allows historical facts to float freely across the narratives like leaves drifting downstream.

“Northwest Passage” joins a flotilla of tomes about the Columbia River on bookstore shelves this year, among them “Rivers of the West: Stories From the Columbia,” by Robert Clark, “Voyages of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia” by Robin Cody and “Sources of the River” by Jack Nisbet. Each has its niche and those who want to understand the immense influence this waterway has had on our lives would be well-served by reading them all.

In some significant ways, “Northwest Passage” reminds me my favorite book about this region, “The Good Rain,” written by New York Times journalist Timothy Egan, also a Seattle resident. They are organized in a similar way, but more important, both of these writers understand that history and fact, even exhaustive researched, are merely tools that help tell great stories.

Much like a long float trip down the river, while reading “Northwest Passage” you’ll encounter rapids, stretches of historical detail that seem dry as the Central Washington sagebrush desert, and placid pools with stories rich in detail. But when you close the covers of this book, you know the story is not over: The waters of the Columbia will continue to roar through the Northwest and you will continue to think about it.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo