Book Club Discussion Questions: Brave the Wild River by Melissa L Sevigny

For those of you that haven't or couldn't attend book club lately, we're publishing this months' discussion questions here. All previous book club selections have been posted, complete with summary, discussion questions and, when necessary or appropriate, additional resources to better understand the topic or context. Here are the questions from our current title, Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon. We hope these questions spark discussions of your own.

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Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

by Melissa L Sevigny

Summary:

Winner of the 2023 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography

A Booklist Top of the List Winner for Nonfiction in 2023

A New Yorker Best Book of 2023

The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon.

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first.

Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon’s secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river’s most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river runners into an ally. Clover and Jotter’s plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystem.

Brave the Wild River is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West, at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever. -- Publisher Description

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Due to an internal error shortly after the event, the original questions to this book have since been lost. Here are some of the questions we have been able to put together since then. We might come back and add more at a later date.

Discussion Questions

1. The expedition to map the plants of the Grand Canyon was very dangerous. What would motivate you to seek out uncharted territory or to make a new discovery?
   

2. Not only did Clover and Jotter need physical courage, they also needed mental courage to defy gender roles in undertaking their expedition. What are some other ways the botanists defied, and accepted, traditional gender roles throughout their journey?
   

3. The first expedition documented in Brave the Wild River takes place in 1938 and the journey is revisited fifty-six years later, showing how much the river had changed. How has your own community changed over the years? Would you recognize it if you went back in time to 1938?
   

4. Clover and Jotter were pioneering female scientists. Who are some other female scientists who made new discoveries in their fields? Do female scientists still face different challenges from their male counterparts today?
   

5.