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My Midlife Fantasy - by Elisabeth Hyde

A novelist considers the career she almost had.
Women on the Web wowOwow.com - September 14, 2009

The thing about midlife fantasies is that there are always a few cherished friends who urge you on. “Why not?” my friend Lisa pressed. I was, after all, in relatively good shape, with both drive and spirit.

Women go out and climb Everest at 50. Breast cancer survivors run marathons. Why not become a river guide?

The urge got even more gassed up when I worked as a guide’s assistant a few years later. One of the guides, a woman named Jan, had taken her first river trip ever just four years ago. She too had gotten the bug, went to guide school, got her GC license and snagged a coveted position with this rafting company.

“If I can do it, YOU can do it,” she told me.

But as time went on, I took no steps to pursue this dream. What was holding me back?

Author’s note

April 21, 2009

Hello, and welcome!

My new novel, In The Heart Of The Canyon (Knopf), will go on sale July 14. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this literary adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So what’s it about? Well, take 15 people with 15 different agendas. Pile them into 3 rubber rafts and send them off down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

Rapids? You bet. Heat? 115 and rising. Egos? Let’s just say that by the second day, everyone wants to throw a certain male passenger overboard.

Yet physical discomforts and personal squabbles pale in comparison to what awaits them downstream. It’s true that in the heart of the Grand Canyon, you put your regular life on hold; and as the guides often say, what happens on the river, stays on the river. But this trip will follow people around for the rest of their lives, in ways none of them could have ever anticipated.

Happy reading!

Elisabeth Hyde Signature