Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Forty Days and Forty Nights, a forthcoming novel of the Mississippi River published by the University of Louisiana Press and written by Amber Edwards and Justin Scott. The book is available for pre-order, and will be released this fall. Captain Ike Edwards—master of the long-haul towboat Miss Josephine of Blytheville— felt like…

After finishing his T-bone, Capt. David Stansbury went to bed. Jackson “Bubba” Walker, the pilot, sat before the stainless-steel levers that controlled William Hank’s rudders, preparing to “make the lock.” Walker, a fifth-generation towboater, could remember floating past No. 52 on the Ohio River in the pilothouse of a towboat captained by his father. As the chambers filled and emptied…