Ben McGrath has been a staff writer at the New Yorker for nearly 20 years.

And in that time, he's written more than 200 stories for the magazine.

Stories about everything from the Mafia to the Iguiderod, and their good stories.

Ben is a nimble, sensitive, pretty funny writer, but most of his pieces are short.

Slices of life, brief moments in time.

For the last few years, though, Ben has been working on a project of an entirely different

magnitude.

It's a book, his first, and it's called River Man.

If many of his New Yorker stories are quick snapshots, then this is the whole role of film.

He sets down on the page, the life story of a guy named Dick Conan, a guy who may just

be the greatest American folk hero you've never heard of.

For decades, Dick Canude, by himself, down thousands of miles of American River, the Mississippi,

Yellowstone, Ohio, and Hudson, he navigated class four rapids and dodged container ships.

He survived brushes with death and got by on the astonishing kindness of strangers, all

while exploring some of the most beautiful, wild places this country has to offer.

And then, in November 2014, he disappeared.

A few months before he fell off the map, Dick was paddling down the Hudson past Pyrmont,

New York, a sleepy, river town about 20 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

And while he was passing through, he met someone.

Someone who'd recently moved to Pyrmont with his family in an effort to get beyond the

city's magnetic pole, in the hope that if you live on the water's edge, you might see

strange and wondrous things float by.

...