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The author of Boating in Ohio trailered a small diesel-inboard boat from South Carolina to Ohio in the summer of 2007. He visited—on land and on water—selected memorials dedicated to settler-Indian clashes. He went particularly to the massacre memorial at Gnadenhutten. He describes this memorial, and describes the other memorials he visited, and recounts their individual if connected histories. The memorials at Stockport, Hockingport, Gnadenhutten, Put-in-Bay, and New Rumley, all small Ohio towns, substantially cover, he says, the western settler-Indian conflict—that dates from 1782 (The Gnadenhutten Massacre) to 1876 (Custer’s Last Stand). While he travels in Ohio, he focuses maybe too much on a submerged ford on the Ohio River just downstream from Mingo Junction. This ford was a watery portal for settlers migrating to the Ohio Country, the unruly, untamed, western wilderness of yore, some of whom were his relatives.

There are a few boating tips, a weight loss diet, mentions of getting lost twice, and once looking for gas. The author makes the argument, as he travels, that marriages dissolve to ensure a mother’s survival; and also that as travel imitates hunting and gathering it thereby mitigates loneliness. He writes on Indian life and marriage. In a Marietta, Ohio, museum he finds a painting that illustrates the invidious connection between marriage and maternal mortality. Stories from Yancey are included in the narrative.