The River Will Be a Part of Us

Justus Wayne Thomas

Book Details
Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9781954119352
124 pages; 100 Color Photographs
6 x 9 inches
$50 US
Essay by TK Smith

In the Summer of 1981, an international assortment of young people gathered at a public park on the banks of the Missouri River just outside Kansas City. In ten days, they built a 16x24-foot raft from assorted lumber, a telephone pole and thirty-two 55-gallon oil drums. Propelled only by the river current and four 10-foot-long deck-mounted oars, in two months the crew of the “Eulenspiegel" floated 1,420 miles down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. This documentary monograph is the story of that walking-pace journey down the backbone of America.


Wayne Thomas has been making photographs since 1978. Now an attorney practicing in Nashville, his photographs have been exhibited in galleries across the country, including the SE Center for Photography, the A Smith Gallery and PhotoPlace Gallery.

TK Smith is an Atlanta-based curator, writer, and cultural historian.