Gerard is at home on the river and a love for the water comes across in the stories that he tells. The story of North Carolina is entangled with the Cape Fear. The river has also seen its share of tragedies and atrocities, from drownings to a racial massacre.
The river would go on to play a role in both the Revolutionary and Civil War and was a site for shipbuilding during both of the World Wars. Native Americans lived along the its banks, French and Spanish sailors explored the river, and the tidal waters became a hangout for pirates all before the first British settlers arrived in the 17th Century. The river has long been an important one.
As he tells of his journey, he provides insight into the river’s history. Traveling by canoe, kayak, johnboat, powerboat and freighter, he covers the entire length of the river from the confluence of the Deep and Haw Rivers to Baldhead Island on the Atlantic. Philip Gerard, the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, sets out to explore the length of this river near his adopted home. The Cape Fear is the only river basin wholly contained within North Carolina and the only river in the state that directly empties into the ocean, the others spilling out behind barrier islands. These include commerce and environmental stewardship, wilderness and development, suburban sprawl and the decline and renaissance of inner cities, and private rights versus the public good. Gerard explores the myriad environmental and political issues being played out along the waters of the Cape Fear. Historical voices also lend their wisdom to our understanding of this river, which has been a main artery of commerce, culture, settlement, and war for the entire region since it was first discovered by Verrazzano in 1524. Accompanying the author by canoe and powerboat are a cadre of people passionate about the river, among them a river guide, a photographer, a biologist, a river keeper, and a boat captain. In Down the Wild Cape Fear, novelist and nonfiction writer Philip Gerard invites readers onto the fabled waters of the Cape Fear River and guides them on the 200-mile voyage from the confluence of the Deep and Haw Rivers at Mermaid Point all the way to the Cape of Fear on Bald Head Island.
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