The Monongahela is one of three rivers that meet in Pittsburgh, where Parker was Executive Vice President of the Waterways Association from 1971 to 1993. He recounts the river's history from a route for early expansion west to its current commercial and leisure use. Among the highlights are the beginning of shipbuilding in the 1790s, the growth of other industries and subsequent need for coal, Carnegie's first steel mill in 1872, the bloody Homestead strike in 1892, the rusting of the steel belt in the 1980s, and attempts to revive.

Pittsburgh's Monongahela River is named after the Lenape Indian word Menaonkihela, meaning "where banks cave and erode." The name is fitting: for over a century, these riverbanks were lined with steel plants and railroads that have now "caved and eroded" away. By the 1880s, Carnegie Steel was the world's largest manufacturer of iron, steel rails, and coke. However, in the 1970s, cheap foreign steel flooded the market. Following the 1981-1982 recession, the plants laid off 153,000 workers. The year 1985 saw the beginning of demolition; by 1990, seven of nine major steel plants had shut down. Duquesne, Homestead, Jones & Laughlin, and Eliza Furnace are gone; only the Edgar Thomson plant remains as a producer of steel. The industry could be said to have built and nearly destroyed the region both economically and environmentally. While these steel plants are lost today, the legacy of their workers is not forgotten.

Richard Bissell has artfully intertwined his experiences as a pilot on the Coal Queen with historical facts and anecdotes about the boats and men who made the Monongahela River in West Virginia into one of America's greatest workhorses.