Review from Dear Reader: 

Wicked River is a look at one of the most colorful, dangerous, and peculiar places in America’s historical landscape: the Mississippi River of the 19th century. Beginning in the early 1800s and climaxing with the siege of Vicksburg, Wicked River takes us back to a time before the Mississippi was dredged into a shipping channel, and before Mark Twain romanticized it into myth. Drawing on an array of first-hand accounts, this is an account of Natchez being flattened by a tornado; the harbor in St. Louis crushed by a massive ice floe; hidden, nefarious celebrations of Mardi Gras; the sinking of the Sultana, the worst naval disaster in American history. And here is the Mississippi itself, perilous, unpredictable and unstoppable, lifeblood to the communities that rose and fell along its banks.