High above sea level in the mountains of the Yellowstone National Park plateau, the river tumbles and rushes down to the Paradise Valley just north of Livingston, Montana, before meandering through the northern high plains for well over five hundred serpentine miles to its confluence with the Missouri River in North Dakota. Each chapter of "Yellowstone Drift "chronicles a leg of John Holt's journey down the river, promising that the reader doesn't miss a single mile of natural beauty. Holt, in his customary free-form, anecdotal style and oblique vision, takes the reader on a wild ride down this natural treasure, examining the wildlife, the people, the fishing, and the river itself.

John Holt is the author of the acclaimed Reel Deep series of trout fishing books, the comic-gothic novel "Hunted," and "Coyote Nowhere: In Search of America's Last Frontier," He lives in Livingston, Montana, with his wife Ginny, a photographer.

Doug Peacock is the author of "Grizzly Years "and "Walking It Off,"