In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche describes the Superman as a human model freed from the constraints and defects of modern values. He embodied the ideals of humanity's future. This vision of the Superman is omnipresent in Timothy Egan's The Good Rain. Egan indirectly draws his model of the Overman from an unlikely source, Theodore Winthrop. In Egan's original text, The Canoe and Saddle, Winthrop lays out a vision of society experiencing a symbiotic relationship with nature in the Northwest. Winthrop romantically imagines that man is in control of his surroundings, taking from the earth what he needs to survive. Egan attempts to see the Northwest the same way Winthrop did, exploring its “sense of place,” analyzing the many ecological changes, and highlighting Winthrop's Overmen in today's society. Through the lens of Nietzsche's Overman one can see how Egan's book contrasts the direction today's society is going with the direction Winthrop imagined. Initially, Egan uses Winthrop as a tool to illustrate how things once were. While exploring the Columbia Bar, Egan points to Winthrop's description of the river more than a hundred years ago. Winthrop's colorful language combined with his artistic talent paints a powerful picture of what the place looked like in his mind's eye. His discourse on the “terrible waves,” the “loathsome swamps,” and the “heroic flood” places a powerful image of the Northwest in the reader's mind (Winthrop 1). After referring to Winthrop, Egan contrasts this image with the current dull and lifeless area, dominated by man-made construction. He says: “The struggle from the mountains to the sea is considerably more indirect now, with concrete obstacles at every great bend and more... middle of paper......German Writers of the Century, 1841-1900. Ed. Siegfried Mews and James N. Hardin. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 129. Literary Resource Center. Network. October 30, 2011.Egan, Timothy. Good rain, across weather and terrain in the Pacific Northwest. New York: Vintage Departures, 1991. Lindholdt, Paul J. "Introduction." The Canoe and the Saddle: A Critical Edition. Ed. Paul J. Lindholdt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. ix-xxvii. Rpt. in nineteenth-century literary criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. vol. 210. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literary Resource Center. Network. October 23, 2011. Pickering, Sam. “Signatures of Experience.” Sewanee Review 105.1 (1997): 142. Literary Reference Center. Network. October 31, 2011. Winthrop, Theodore. The canoe and the saddle or Klalam and Klickatat. Tacoma: Franklin-Ward Company, 1993. eBook.