Peter Heller

IN PETER HELLER’S NEW novel, The River, a wilderness canoeing trip turns into a life-or-death struggle when two college students encounter a geochemist whose claim that his wife just went missing doesn’t quite add up and another pair of canoers who seem like a possible threat. All the while, a monstrous forest fire consumes its way toward them.

The wildfire lurks in the background throughout the book, seldom seen but sensed with gut-dropping dread like the predators in and . It’s practically a character itself, and a well-developed one at that. For good reason: The inferno, an inevitable and unstoppable horror creeping toward the protagonists and antagonists alike, was inspired by a blaze that came a minute-and-a-half from ending the