"...highly creative and exceptionally well written...an impressive piece of work..."
—National Outdoor Book Awards
"Anything Worth Doing is a true drama whose characters will break your heart with their dreams, courage, vulnerability, and absolute determination to live life on their own terms, no matter the cost."
—Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men
"Anything Worth Doing unfolds with an inevitability worthy of two vastly different art forms: whitewater dory navigation, and Greek tragedy. The wonder of these forms is that, in Jo Deurbrouck's able hands (as in Homer's or Euripides'), knowing the fatal outcome in no way diminishes the power of the narrative or the element of surprise. Clancy Reece turns out to be a redneck poet-hero worthy of a not-yet-written ballad by Steve Earle, Jon Barker is no less admirably crazed than Lewis or Clark, and Ms. Deurbrouck has written Western river lovers a white-knuckled adventure classic."
—David James Duncan, author of The River Why, The Brothers K, & the forthcoming Sun House
"Anyone who's ever sung along buzzed to the Old Crow Medicine Show line 'If I die in Raleigh, at least I will die free' will love this story, as will anyone who has ever known and been quickened by the feral spirits of wild people in love with wild places, and anyone who has ever sat beside a river and pondered the water's beauty and brute strength, and anyone who wants to be transported by a landscape and a story rooted in the physical world."
—Chris Dombrowski, Missoula Independent
"The account of Reece’s demise is truly terrifying, but Anything Worth Doing is ultimately a profile of one of Idaho’s last iconoclast boatmen...Reece comes across as bearish and self-reliant, like a landlocked Thor Heyerdahl or a less militant George Heyduke."
—Grayson Shaffer, Senior Editor, Outside Magazine
"Anything Worth Doing begins in contemplative headwaters and builds into a story as powerful as a floodstage river."
—Rocky Barker, Author of Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America
"If Clancy Reece's adage, ‘Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,’ rings even a distant bell of truth for you, then you simply must read Jo Deurbrouck's utterly engrossing account of Reece's doomed final voyage. Deurbrouck skillfully tunes us in to the heart and soul of a rare breed, one for whom a wild mountain river is as necessary as the river of blood flowing through his own body. Reece's necessity lies beyond the experience of many in this ‘modern’ age of engineered, dead rivers, but with deft precision, Deurbrouck leads her readers to Clancy's own inescapable conclusion: The life in us really is like the life in a river."
—Steven Hawley, author of Recovering a Lost River: Removing Dams, Rewilding Salmon, Revitalizing Communities
"This unforgettable book—one doesn’t quite know where to begin praising it: whether at the literary or emotional level—catches, then lodges in the eddy of the heart."
—Cort Conley, Literature Program Director, Idaho Commission on the Arts
"...a story of life, beauty, passion and loss."
—Christina Marfice, Boise Weekly
