Boats Against the Current charts the struggles of six unforgettable lives braided together in the Great Depression, with FDR’s New Deal and its Works Progress Administration serving as armature for the book. Bevis Longstreth ’56 tells the story of twin brothers and their father from Kansas, a calculating young woman from Virginia, a Dust Bowl escapee, and a female psychiatrist from Austria as they seek survival, work, love, and purpose in the midst of the Depression.