The Power of the River

From a former Gonzaga basketball player and current University of Washington Dean and Vice Provost comes a memoir steeped in the universal truths and human pursuits of love, grace, forgiveness, and continued growth.

Ed Taylor takes readers on a journey from Lompoc, California through a childhood marked with loss but grounded in the love and support of family and community, to a singular moment that changed everything for a boy set up by the system to be a cog in the machine.

But Taylor's story is only beginning on the day Gonzaga University offers him a full ride: Faced with questions every young Black man on a basketball scholarship has heard-questions like "Do you even belong here?" and "Do you really think you can cut it?"-Taylor answers by examining himself, everything that brought him to this place, and all that he hopes to bring to the world, and by rising to the ever-increasing challenges he sets for himself.

In The Power of the River, Ed Taylor offers perspective on his journey as it relates to the larger, human one we're all on together, inviting us to celebrate the many individuals-family members, teachers, coaches, colleagues, friends, and chance acquaintances-who lifted him up and taught him along the way and reminding us that even while we are responsible for our impacts on those in our lives, we all deserve some measure of grace.

Dr. Edward Taylor has been a friend, a colleague a partner, a son, a father, a teacher, a student, and a fisher on the river of life, and here he shares what he knows of its power.