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Author: Patrick Dobson

Dr. Patrick Dobson is a work in progress until his termination. In the meantime, He is a writer, scholar, postman, and college professor living in Kansas City, MO.

The University of Nebraska Press published his travel memoirs, Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer in 2015 and Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains in 2009. Canoeing the Great Plains won the 2016 High Plains Book Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. His essays and poems have been published in New Letters, daCunha, Kansas City Star, Garo, Wood Coin, and JONAHmagazine, and others.

Dobson earned a doctorate in American History and Literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2013. He has edited books, taught journalism, and been a union ironworker. He now teaches American History, Modern Latin American History, and Western Civilization at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS.

He looks forward to hearing from you soon.

Part 4: The Missouri River brings me closer to myself

The book I took on the river journey was The Education of Henry Adams. It was perfect. The sixty-some author and historian looked back on his life and realized the classical education he received as a child and young man didn’t equip him for changes the American Industrial Revolution wrought.…

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Part 3: Trouble in Atchison, Kansas

Nick was still asleep in the tent. I had a few minutes to myself. I breathed in the fog heavy air filled with the smells of dried grass and river. I felt light. I was empty of the uncertainties I brought with me on the trip. They were lost out…

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Part 2: The Missouri River forgets

Ennui and lack of enthusiasm conquered the last several months, extending now to years, of my life. I wanted a way out, a way to see that, in fact, I’m a lucky guy with a decent home, family, and work. But it didn’t happen. I constantly got up in the…

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Part 1: The Missouri River abides

The Missouri River exerts powerful influence on me and my personality. As a force, it attracts me to it, and once on its banks, I can’t turn away. Fear fills my life. I’m scared of the future and worry over my career. I doubt my abilities as a father and…

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The debt I owe to Tony Beasley

Tony Beasley, first known to me as Conger, and I met at D’Bronx on 39th and Bell one fall afternoon. I had contacted him because he wrote travel memoir, which was and is my favorite genre. I asked him to come have a talk with me. He didn’t ask what…

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