In 1789, fourteen years before Lewis and Clark, Alexander Mackenzie traveled 1200 miles on the immense river in Canada that now bears his name, in search of the fabled Northwest Passage that had eluded mariners for hundreds of years. What he found was a river that he named “Disappointment.” Mackenzie died thinking he had failed. He was wrong. In 2016, Castner retraced Mackenzie's route by canoe in a grueling journey – and discovered the Passage he could not find.   DISAPPOINTMENT RIVER is a dual historical narrative and travel memoir that at once transports readers back to the heroic age of North American exploration and places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of globalization and climate change. Brian Castner is a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer who received a Bronze Star for his service in the Iraq War.  He is also author of two other books, THE LONG WALK (2012) and All the Ways We Kill and Die (2016), and the co-editor of the anthology The Road Ahead (2017).