One Book, One Community Of Monroe County

What if everyone read the same book and then joined all those readers in talking about it? That’s the idea behind One Book, One Community of Monroe County.  

Each year, the One Book, One Community of Monroe County selection committee chooses a readily available and discussible book written by a major author, and invites Monroe County residents to read the same book at the same time and discuss it through a series of free programs running approximately one month. Each year’s events feature book discussions and free county-wide community activities related to the themes raised by these provocative and inspiring stories.  One Book, One Community of Monroe County aims to enrich the experience of reading for everyone, regardless of race, gender, age, income or the neighborhood they call home.

One Book One Community of Monroe County 2023

The Committee is excited to announce that the One Book One Community selection for 2023 is The River by Peter Heller. It is the thrilling and fast-paced story of an excursion by best friends that quickly turns into a desperate struggle for survival.

About the Book

Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddles and picking blueberries and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But – the next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller, unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.