No one has ever paddled the entire length of the Bronx River--until now. Two underqualified adventurers explore history and disparity when they launch from Westchester's richest neighborhood and come ashore in the nation's poorest, the South Bronx. New York City's only freshwater river coalesces from brooks and streams in Westchester County and dumps itself 23 miles south in the face of Rikers Island. The river is witness to more of our country’s income inequality than its surrounding residents, stumbling and tumbling from its tributaries in one of New York’s wealthiest districts to its mouth in the single poorest district in the entire United States.

The Bronx River has a bad rap. Polluted? Yeah, in some parts. Full of tires and cars? Yeah, it used to be. But these fleeting eras of negative human impact have not destroyed the things that make the Bronx River one of the most striking waterways in North America: sky-high bluffs that encase a paddler on both sides, rocky waterfalls powerful enough to grind tobacco into snuff through the 19th century, countless deep channels hiding beaver and gargantuan carp, and an urban landscape that runs from pastoral to post-apocalyptic. The Bronx River is an outdoor adventure-seeker’s paradise. It begins in prosperity and ends in America’s most extreme poverty, and this is the first documented journey down the river's entire length.