Fretwater Press is a small publisher, based in the pine forests of northern Arizona.
We specialize in river-related titles. More specifically, our titles tell of some of the great historic boatmen of the Colorado River. If you have ever run a river, longed to, or just love great adventure tales, we invite you to tour our site, browse our books, and, of course, buy them.

The name Fretwater comes from Major Powell's 1871 expedition on the Green and Colorado Rivers.

The Very Hard Way:
Bert Loper and the Colorado River
by Brad Dimock, 2007.

Bert Loper, the Grand Old Man of the Colorado, was born the day Major Powell discovered the confluence of the San Juan and Colorado in 1869. He died just days after the first motorboat had passed through Grand Canyon. He knew every river runner in between, and by the time of his death at 80 years old, had run more of the Colorado than anyone. But it was never easy--orphaned an abused, Loper had to make his way along the bottom of society, often as a hard-rock miner, coal miner or lonely placer miner on a gravel bar. But in the Colorado River he found inspiration, and he died at the oars of his own wooden boat in a major Grand Canyon Rapid. Loper is truly mythic, and his is the story of the Colorado.

A book so well written it reads like great literature. I'm not kidding. Its 456 pages never once bog down; fast-paced whitewater reading all the way through.

-- Joe Foster, Durango Telegraph

Glen Canyon Betrayed:
A Sensuous Elegy
by Katie Lee, 2006.

Originally published to high acclaim in 1998 as All My Rivers Are Gone, Katie Lee's beloved masterpiece has returned to print, updated, with new photographs, an index, and a fiery new afterword by Ms. Lee.
Thank goodness.

 The Doing of the Thing:
The Brief, Brilliant Whitewater Career of Buzz Holmstrom
by Vince Welch, Cort Conley, and Brad Dimock, 1998

In 1937, Buzz Holmstrom, a poor, unknown filling station attendant from Coquille, Oregon, shocked the country by being the first to solo the Green and Colorado Rivers--over a thousand miles of rapid-filled canyons--in a homemade boat. Nine years later his body was found on the banks of Oregon's Grande Ronde River, his death even more mysterious than his life.

 Sunk Without a Sound:
The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde
by Brad Dimock, 2001

On November 17, 1928, Glen and Bessie Hyde hiked back down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon to continue their honeymoon voyage down the Colorado River. They were never seen again. Over the next six decades four seperate tales of their fate emerged, each spawning stories of murder and mayhem. Author Brad Dimock ferrets out the tale of the Hydes and the rumors surrounding them, even going so far as to recreate the Hydes' archaic scow for a harrowing trip through Grand Canyon with his own bride.

 The Brave Ones
The Journals and Letters of the 1911-12 Expedition Down the Green and Colorado Rivers by
Ellsworth L. Kolb and Emery C. Kolb
including the journal of Hubert R. Lauzon
William C. Suran, editor, 2003

In September, 1911, brothers Emery and Ellsworth Kolb, Grand Canyon photographers, lauched their river expedition at Green River, Wyoming. Four months later they arrived at Needles, California, with stories, photographs, and movies enough to last them a lifetime. Now, for the first time, you can read their thrilling day-to-day accounts of their adventure as they row, careen, flip, swim, crash, and come out smiling.

Every Rapid Speaks Plainly
The Salmon, Green, and Colorado River journals of
Buzz Holmstrom
including the 1938 accounts of Amos Burg, Philip Lundstrom, and Willis Johnson
Brad Dimock, editor, 2003

Buzz Holmstrom is the subject of our popular biography, The Doing of the Thing. It was Holmstrom's brilliance as a boat designer and builder, and his pioneering solo runs down the great rivers of America, that first brought him national attention. But it is his humble and insightful prose that sets him apart from the chest-thumping men of his day and brings him into the modern heart. For those who have read The Doing of the Thing and want to know Holmstrom better, or for those who simply want to follow a brilliant man, through his own words, as he moves uneasily from the age of wilderness expeditions to the more modern commercialized era, Every Rapid Speaks Plainly will speak to you.

In 1953 Francis P. Farquhar published his classic The Books of The Colorado River & The Grand Canyon: A Selective Bibliography selecting and describing the 125 most significant works about the region.

Now, fifty years later, Mike S. Ford has review the literature of the last half-century and written the sequel: The Books of The Grand Canyon, The Colorado River, The Green River, & The Colorado Plateau: 1953-2003: A Selective Bibliography.

To mark the occasion, Fretwater Press published Ford's new work and, in conjunction with Five Quail Books, produced a magnificent and updated reproduction of Farquhar's original. If you love the Colorado River system, its rivers, canyons, and plateaus, you will want these brilliant guides to the literature about them.