In the 1930s Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter wanted to gather and catalogue plants in the Grand Canyon.
To do so they’d have to raft an untamed river, face down their colleagues in a male-dominated field and do all the cooking.
Melissa Sevigny’s book Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon, started out with a chance encounter with a hyperlink naming botanist Lois Jotter.
The subsequent discovery of Jotter's writings and works collected at the Northern Arizona University library that mention a raft trip down the Grand Canyon in 1938 sparked Sevigny’s curiosity.
Sevigny's book tells the story of Clover and Jotter, two botanists who faced sexism, physical peril, and professional doubters as they determined to map the botany of the Grand Canyon.
The book won a National Outdoor Book Award in 2023 and hit many top ten lists for the year. High Country News named it to their top five.
The book is also part of Yuma County Public Library’s One Book Yuma program and author Melissa Sevigny will be in Yuma March 21st for a series of events.
