Downriver

Downriver is a novel by the American writer Will Hobbs, published in 1991 and set in the Grand Canyon.

Jessie has been sent by her father to an outdoor education program called Discovery Unlimited, where she meets the other teenagers who become her companions. Rather than finish the course as intended, the group borrows the company's rafting equipment and launches itself down the Colorado River, without adults, without the permit that would have been required and without a river map. The first days are idyllic: they float under red canyon walls, camp on sand, and explore side canyons and waterfalls. Then the consequences arrive. Helicopters begin looking for them, and pushing on takes them into the black-walled inner gorge, where the rapids are genuinely dangerous and the weather turns, and where injuries and arguments begin to divide the group. The novel is about the difference between an adventure and a decision, and about what seven young people owe to each other once they cannot simply go home.

Hobbs writes wilderness fiction for young readers with close attention to the practical details of river running, and his characters' competence is the thing that keeps them alive.