When Amanda Hoenes last spoke with the Springfield News-Leader, she was about two months into her 3,300-mile journey to canoe the Missouri River. The 1999 Branson High School graduate finished her adventure in Jan. 18, 2022 along the Louisiana coast after starting about six months prior in Montana.
Now, the military veteran has a book titled “Digging Deeper” detailing the adventure that took 186 days to complete.
The Cedar Creek resident said she hadn’t planned on writing a whole book, though she kept a journal for data and updated an ongoing blog, “A River Adventure.”
“You have to go with the creative wave as it hit you,” Hoenes said about dealing with writer’s block to finish the book in 10 months. “It felt surreal, to be honest.”
Hoenes had never written a book, but the dream was always floating in the back of her mind.
“I would really like to be an author,” Hoenes told herself. “But it’s never something you think is going to happen.”
Among the pages of triumph and perseverance were some mishaps, including finding a 100-year hatching of deerflies that swarmed Hoenes and her rescue dog, Hank
