Ricochet River

Picture the popular jock, the blue-collar bookworm who wants more out of life, and the outcast who doesn't know he's not part of the club all navigating high school. Now, cue the backdrop of a small town surrounded by woods and a dammed river, nothing to do but hang out at the local cinema and café-barbershop. This is the foundation for Robin Cody’s Ricochet River, a coming-of-age story exemplifying the all-too-familiar awkwardness and angst that accompany growing up. With a warmth and nuance that have been celebrated for decades, Ricochet River reinvigorates the genre with an unequivocally Oregonian flare—calling readers back to a deeper understanding of nature and the simple freedoms that are often lost as we struggle to form identities and fit into an increasingly complicated world.

Ricochet River was chosen as one of the Oregon State Library’s “150 Books for the Oregon Sesquicentennial” and was named one of the best "100 Oregon Books" of all time by the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

Robin Cody is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, and a winner of the Western Writers of America Silver Spur Award for short nonfiction. In 1995, he won the Oregon Book Award for Voyage of a Summer Sun, an account of his canoe trip from the headwaters of the Columbia to its mouth at the Pacific. Ricochet River is his best known and best loved book and he has worked tirelessly since its publication to ensure it reaches the audience of young readers it deserves. A teacher himself for over a decade, Robin has deep roots in schools around Portland and is excited by the opportunity to bring Ricochet River to a wider audience. He lives in Portland with his wife, Donna, and when the weather cooperates, can usually be found floating leisurely down the Columbia.