By Brian Trompeter
George Wolfe drew from his life’s experiences – from venturing through stormwater pipes in his old Vienna neighborhood to paddling all 51 miles of the Los Angeles River – to bring characters alive in his second novel.
“Into the River of Angels” centers around Sam Hawkins, a disaffected 17-year-old living in California’s San Fernando Valley, who decides to paddle down the Los Angeles River’s entire length to find fulfillment and confront issues that are holding him back.
After overcoming fears and marshaling resources with help from friends, he sets off on his odyssey, where he ends up befriending people from all walks of life, enduring hardships and being menaced by hardened criminals operating along the river. He and his cohorts also learn to overcome disputes, develop self-reliance, make plans and stick to their word, the author said.
“Guys, perhaps more than young women, are looking for ways to prove themselves,” Wolfe said in a recent interview with the GazetteLeader. “I think all of the characters in some ways are cutting against the grain of the status quo or what they perceive going on around them.”
Most action in the book, which is aimed at readers ages 15 to 25, occurs in 2008 and is told in retrospect several years later by the protagonist.
Wolfe fondly remembers the adventures he and his neighborhood friends had near Nottoway Park when growing up in Vienna. When Wolfe’s family came to the town in 1974, the park mostly consisted of sprawling forest and was “perfect fodder for exploration as a kid,” he said.
He and his buddies also ventured into, and made maps of, the neighborhood’s stormwater system and popped their heads up from manholes like gophers, he recalled.
The author, 59, graduated from Oakton High School in 1982. From there he went to Oberlin College near Cleveland, where he earned a degree in urban studies. He later worked in Brooklyn and became interested in writing while attending film school at New York University. Wolfe subsequently earned a master’s degree at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he met his wife.
After working as a journalist in Washington state for 10 years, he and his family missed seeing sunshine, and in 2002 moved to the Los Angeles area, where they have resided ever since.
Wolfe started a satire site, the LaLa Times, to poke fun at the bizarre things he has seen in California. He also worked in journalism, then eight years ago switched to advertising copywriting.
The author became involved in river activism in 2008 because of a court case over which U.S. waters could be protected and which could be built over. The Los Angeles River was poised to lose its Clean Water Act protections, said Wolfe, who already had been boating on the river just for curiosity’s sake.
“It seemed like this strange, forbidden waterway,” he said. “There were signs saying you could face fines, prosecution and jail. That was good enough to get me out on the river.”
Wolfe especially likes the river’s unpredictability, from the people who live along the river to the myriad pieces of detritus that wash up along its banks.
“All the classic elements of a river are there, but then you add in this urban layer over the top,” he said. “It’s just that weirdness. You never know. Anytime I go down there, I’m always surprised at something I find.”
Wolfe never has been fined for his exploits on the river, but has been approached by police multiple times and told to get out of it.
An activist saw him on the water and convinced him to publicize his efforts, in hopes of eventually opening up the river for recreation. Wolfe led a three-day expedition in summer 2008 to prove the river was navigable from end to end. Two years later, the EPA restored and enhanced the river’s protections, he said.
“The L.A. River, of all rivers, ironically became an example for how to protect the urban waterways around the country,” Wolfe said.
The author subsequently started a nonprofit and began doing kayak tours on parts of the river. He already had written one book, “Blake’s Bible,” and thought it would be a natural fit to do an adventure novel centered around the river.
Wolfe worked at the book on and off for about a decade, as life intervened with its usual crises and challenges, but got it published earlier this year. He is committed to marketing his latest novel, but is considering a future series of young-adult adventure books set in various places across the country.
Peter Bennett, an author and photographer who since 2008 has been documenting the Los Angeles River, first came to know the author when Wolfe kayaked up to him during a tour of the waterway conducted by Friends of the L.A. River (FoLAR).
“No one was kayaking the river at that point because, A, it was illegal, and B, it wouldn’t occur to most people,” he said.
Wolfe asked him to take photos of his expedition on the river, and Bennett accompanied the author for two of the three days before coming down with the flu.
The expedition’s intent was to convince the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to change the river’s designation to a navigable waterway.
“It was pretty groundbreaking at the time to do something like that,” Bennett said. “Like most East Coasters, we see the L.A. River and say, ‘What the hell is this thing?’ Most people see it as kind of a flood channel or a movie backdrop or something kind of goofy, not a ‘river’ river.”
Bennett said he enjoyed reading Wolfe’s book, which he described as “Huck Finn meets Treasure Island with a weird, dystopian, L.A. River background.”
