Reading & Signing: Keeping the Chattahoochee

The Book Lady Bookstore, Ogeechee Riverkeeper, and The Learning Center are teaming up for an author talk with Sally Sierer Bethea, author of Keeping the Chattahoochee (University of Georgia Press) and one of the first women in America to become a “riverkeeper”—a vocal defender of a specific waterway who holds polluters accountable.

In Keeping the Chattahoochee, Bethea tells stories that range from joyous and funny to frustrating—even alarming—to illustrate what it takes to save an endangered river. Her tales are triggered by the regular walks she takes through a forest to the Chattahoochee over the course of a year, finding solace and kinship in nature.

Tickets are $10, and are also available at the door on the day of the event.

Books are available for sale & signing at the event. For pre-orders, please call The Book Lady Bookstore at 912-233-3628. All book proceeds go to support the work of Ogeechee Riverkeeper and are much appreciated.

The venue has ample free parking on Jasper Street beside the easily accessible entrance.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

SALLY SIERER BETHEA is the retired founding director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. She served as executive director and riverkeeper for two decades and continues to assist Chattahoochee Riverkeeper as a senior advisor. Bethea also publishes a monthly column, Above the Waterline, in Atlanta Intown. She lives and writes in midtown Atlanta.

For two decades, Bethea worked to restore the neglected Chattahoochee, which provides drinking water and recreation to millions of people, habitat for wildlife, and water for industries and farms as it cuts through the heart of the Deep South. Pairing natural and political history with reflective writing, she draws readers into her watershed and her memories. Bethea’s passion for the natural world—and for defending it with a strong, informed voice animates this instructive memoir. Offering lessons on how to fight for our fundamental right to clean water, Bethea and her colleagues take on powerful corporate and government polluters. They strengthen environmental policies and educate children, reviving the great river from a century of misuse.