Potomac Fever

February 1, 2025

In her first book, historian, herbalist, and educator Fryar combines a discussion of her experiences living and exploring near the Potomac River with a social and political history of the Washington, DC, area. Her book details her excursions along the banks of the river and other nearby spaces. It also chronicles the disturbing history of the area, focusing on the experiences of Black and Indigenous people. There's a chapter devoted to a well-researched, detailed discussion of the history of swimming opportunities for white people vs. the lack of them for Black people in Washington, DC. The author, a white woman, even discusses how much she enjoys being able to swim in the Potomac, which is illegal. Her passion for both history and for the natural world is evident in her writing. There is a disconnect, however, between her impassioned descriptions of the historic and routine abuse of Black and Indigenous people in the area and a missed opportunity to invite present-day Black and Indigenous people to share their thoughts and experiences with and around the area. VERDICT For readers looking for a different lens through which to view the U.S. capital and to see both the ugly impacts of racism and the beauty of nature.--Judy Poyer

Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2025
Singing the praises of the Potomac. Like Paris, Cairo, and Shanghai, Washington, D.C., boasts a river that runs through it. Fryar describes the nation's capital as a "place that represents and contains every other place, and therefore has no particular locality or regionality unto itself. Washington, D.C., is the nation's geographic void." She adds that to live in Washington is to be in a "constant state of disorientation." In this, her first book, she offers a bittersweet love letter to a polluted but beautiful river that provides a sense of place. The descendant of enslavers and Klansmen, and with a Ph.D. in American studies, Fryar lives near the banks of the Potomac and considers herself a "citizen of the Potomac River." For her, the Potomac--named after the Algonquin village of Patawomeck--mirrors "the national mood," and so her book is about American history and culture as well as a particular body of water. Written with verve and a profound understanding of the contradictions of American democracy, her book explores life in the river, in the subterranean streams that feed it, and along its shores. Divided into 11 lyrical chapters with titles including "Sycamore," "Honeysuckle," and "Bones," it traces topics such as the wilderness, private property, and public lands. It also sings the praises of nature in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau. Quotations from James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Abigail Adams--who described the "fledgling cityscape" as "the very dirtiest Hole I ever saw"--amplify Fryar's moral invective and cry for human and environmental justice. Readers might curl up with her book in the comfort of home or, after visiting the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, take it with them on a stroll along a river that, as Fryar points out, is not yet safe enough to swim in and drink from, though it is cleaner than it has been in a hundred years. A lovely ode to an oft-neglected river.

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