the literary gatekeepers" who sell books beside the river.
Anecdotes abound of the bridges that cross the Seine in Paris, seasonal sand-and-palm-tree "beaches," and "bouqinistes. Following its course, she meets a fourth-generation grape grower in Champagne rowers who preserve historic boats the River Brigade, who are "just like Miami Vice, no?" and an elderly barge-woman mourning her landlocked retirement. She ventures to its inauspicious source in Burgundy a "little hole in a man-made limestone grotto in the middle of nowhere" and is inspired by the fable of the Gallo-Roman "healing goddess" Sequana for whom the river was named. "In the spring of 1978 I was seduced by a river," writes Sciolino, who then describes the Seine as "the most romantic river in the world" and explains how it has served as a strategic waterway in times of war (it slowed Hitler's retreat after D-Day) and peace (it was an important shipping route for the Romans). In this entertaining and informative travel memoir, former New York Times Paris bureau chief Sciolino (The Only Street in Paris) explores France's celebrated river, the Seine.
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