Plumb’s Bluff

In Ely’s last, terse novel, Chalmers Plumb has one goal: to win a national rapids race so he can manufacture and sell his father’s canoe design. But reality keeps interfering. His father is murdered on a night run by barbed wire strung across the river, and now Chalmers has been searching for clues to his murder, carrying his father’s pistol. Then, while practicing a run in his canoe Chalmers saves Livia, a Romanian sculptress from attempted suicide; she takes this as a sign, moving in with him. Trouble is, the local preacher does not like the fact that this “foreigner” starts swimming nude in the river’s Baptismal pool and feels he must denounce her as demon seed at a Sunday church meeting. In a tight community, this is not good.