From Canadian wilderness to Longview smelters, the book introduces all the issues that embroil the Columbia: from hydropower to nuclear waste to logging to salmon to treaties.
Unable to dwell too long on any particular issue, Cody doesn't try to draw specific conclusions from his journey. His focus on the geologic timescale of the river leaves the impression that time will smooth the ripples of human folly. The down-to-earth stories of the people he meets argues that although the collective results might have been foolish, the participants were/are hard-working, well-meaning, humans.
Beyond politics then, Voyage does a wonderful job of stirring the restless energy to explore and experience that wells up from the constraints of two weeks of vacation a year
Cody's prose is easy to read, and his focus shifts pleasantly between the people he meets, the river itself, the issues surrounding it, and the workings of the canoe trip.
The real problem I see is that Cody took his trip in 1990. Some of his information, obviously, is still solid, but in other areas, Voyage is getting dated. There's been a whole new round of power generation arguments, salmon policy changes, and weather shifts since then. The Hanford tank farms, in particular, have completed a major cleanup project, and a lot of the menacing toxic-waste threats he announces have been solved, softened, or shown to be less dangerous than thought. So it's a good book, but you have to read it with its age in mind.
At the center of Robin Cody's book is the great river -rich with history, myth, riverfolk, salmon and the effects of progress. Winner of the Oregon Book Award and a PNBA Book award, Voyage of a Summer Sun is the account of a fascinating, personal odyssey: a modern-day expedition down the length of the Columbia River.