This Death by Drowning

This is a collection of memoir-like essays by Nebraska poet William Kloefkorn, all of them related in one way or another with water - from a near-drowning at the age of four to accounts of river rafting on central Nebraska's Loup River. There is also a baptism in a creek near a small Kansas town where the author grew up. Perhaps most absorbing is the description of life on a hard-scrabble homestead, as lived by Koefkorn's grandparents, without electricity or plumbing, though not without "running water" as provided by runoff from the roof into an underground cistern. Memories of his young years as a schoolboy include the sinking of ships at Pearl Harbor and drownings at sea during WWII. Granting himself a degree of poetic license, the author weaves together multiple narrative threads and vividly remembered images and epiphanies so that the result is a kind of awed stream of consciousness, laced at points with irony and humor best described as "midwestern". Not a far cry from Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, and fans of that show should enjoy this book.