There's no shortage of 20th-century literature about traveling Across America in a car. Even William Least Heat-Moon, author of, wrote a nonfiction work about his search in a beat-up ford for himself and America ( ). But...There's no shortage of 20th-century literature about traveling Across America in a car. Even William Least Heat-Moon, author of, wrote a nonfiction work about his search in a beat-up ford for himself and America ( ). But not since the 19th-century adventures of mark twain, as told in, have readers had the chance to vicariously take a journey Across America by water rather than by road., a voyage Across America's waterways, is a return to a bygone literary tradition.