Brian Fox Ellis

A River of Stories Brian Fox Ellis

Travel the River Road and meet the famous and infamous folks who call the river home. The river is a time machine. As you travel the Illinois River you are traveling through millions of years of geological splendor and thousands of years of human drama. This collection of true history and folklore allows you to meander back in time. With a mix of humor and horror, natural history and nonsense, this delightful collection of stories gives you an arm chair tour of the Illinois River and introduces you to its most colorful inhabitants. Starting with a tour of the geology and an American Indian ghost story, we then meet a duck hunter, a ghost dog, a French Explorer and a friend of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln himself spent time on the river so he too shares a tale. There are stories from the glory days of steam-boating, one that is true but reads like a tall tale, and a modern tale of the great fisheries told by an ichthyologist! Another American Indian ghost story, a short poem and a few ideas for writing and telling your own tales rounds out the collection. The author, Brian "Fox" Ellis is a bona-fide Riverlorian, a man who has studied the history of the river and shares his river lore on the Spirit of Peoria riverboat. He has worked on the Spirit of Peoria for more than 25 years! He has also performed on The Delta Queen and most of the other boats that sail the great River Road. If you would like to join him on an actual river cruise visit the website http: //www.spiritofpeoria.comThis book is the first in a series called Fox Tales Folklore that blends history and ecology, poetry and personal narrative to explore themes like Tall Tree Tales, Prairie Tales, Fox Tales and Fish Tales. All of the books will soon be available here on Amazon as a paperback or ebook, but you can also visit http: //www.foxtalesint.com to download an audio book or watch a live performance of these stories on his YouTube channel Fox Tales Internationa