Focusing on the Merrimack River, Tender the River weaves historical, geological, social, and personal narratives together, from the last ice age, to the indigenous tribes that settled there and before driven off by Europeans, to the birth of the industrial age and the urban decline and rebirth of the late 20th century. It hopes to be a celebratory and critical look at the relationship between the various human worlds as well as the natural world they occupy and give readers a sense of the bigger story we are all a part of by using this one small scratch of the earth as an example.