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In 1682, the French explorer Robert de La Salle became the first European to journey from the Great Lakes down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. There at the delta, he claimed for France the vast heartland of America. With the passage of time, the Mississippi River has become a central part of the American psyche, a running theme in our history and folklore. Long fascinated by the enigmatic La Salle, Daniel Spurr traces La Salle's route. From the upper Midwest, where seemingly every town has a street or park named after La Salle, they head downriver to New Orleans and beyond. What follows is a journey of remembrance and awakening, a juxtaposition of the nation that has grown up along the banks of the Mississippi and the untamed wilderness of La Salle's time - a "pre-America" that is revealed by the journals and documents of La Salle and his contemporaries. As Spurr, his son, and his grown daughter encounter the people and culture of the region and imagine its history, he illuminates the changes that the landscape and its denizens have undergone. Spurr himself comes across a kindred spirit in the polio-stricken Lee Politsch, who has spent much of his life studying the engravings on a sandstone tablet found in Illinois. The tablet, he believes, proves that La Salle, not Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette, discovered the Upper Mississippi.

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A poignant voyage of discovery down the great Mississippi.

Praised by such authors as John Barth, and George V. Higgins, Dan Spurr's gently powerful memoir, Steered by the Falling Stars, captured the hearts of readers with its story of death, rebirth, and redemption and its evocative description of life under sail. Now, Spurr takes us on another adventure, a voyage into not only the heartland of contemporary America but also back into the rough and ready days of exploration and discovery 250 years ago.

Following the trail of the enigmatic French explorer Rene de La Salle, Spurr takes his seven-year-old son Steve and his grown daughter Adriana down the Mississippi from Chicago to New Orleans in the rundown, underpowered Belle. Throughout the journey, the juxtaposition of modern America on the river's banks and the untamed wilds of La Salle's day, as revealed through journals and historical documents, illuminates the changes in the land and its people over the intervening centuries.

The inexorable flow of Spurr's clean and honest prose mirrors that of this greatest of American rivers. The voices of the river's denizens and the keen observations of the author's young and wide-eyed shipmates take us deep into the heart of an ever-changing American landscape.

Daniel Spurr is the editor of Practical Sailor magazine and was former senior editor of Cruising World. He is the author of Steered by the Falling Stars, as well as of two instructional sailing books, and lives in Newport, Rhode Island.

A little over 300 years after the French explorer Ren? de La Salle became the first known European to travel from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, Spurr, editor of Practical Sailor magazine, followed his route, starting in Chicago and sailing down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans in Belle, a 20-foot fishing boat. He was accompanied by his seven-year-old son, Steve, and later joined by his 24-year-old daughter, Adria, on this 16-day trip. Spurr devotes a fair amount of time to the technical problems of sailing and repair but also includes historical reconstructions of La Salle's explorationsAincluding speculation that he, not Jolliet, was the white discoverer of the upper Mississippi. There is also a good deal of Spurr family history (especially memories of a dead father and a dead son), descriptions of local sights and affectionate and humorous anecdotes of a father and a young son traveling together. Unlike Jonathan Raban (Old Glory), who delighted in the eccentricities he encountered during his sail down the Mississippi, Spurr is usually sunny and amused, more interested in the journey itselfAand the story of La SalleAthan in what he sees en route. Included, too, are pleasant asides on underwater explorations for La Salle shipwrecks in the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. This is a thoroughly enjoyable recreation. Photos. (June)