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 the future of humanity. This vision of the Superman is omnipresent in The Good Rain by Timothy Egan. Egan indirectly draws his mold of the Overman from an unlikely source, Theodore Winthrop. In Egan's source text, The Canoe and Saddle, Winthrop presents a vision of a society living a symbiotic relationship with nature in the Northwest. Winthrop romantically imagines man controlling the environment around him, taking from the earth what he needs to survive. Egan attempts to view the Northwest in a similar way to Winthrop by 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, we can see how Egan's book contrasts the direction society is heading today with the direction Winthrop imagined. Initially, Egan uses Winthrop as a tool to illustrate how things once were. As he explores the Columbia Bar, Egan points out Winthrop's description of the river more than a hundred years ago. Winthrop's colorful language combined with his artistry paints a powerful picture of what the place looked like in the mind's eye. His words about the “terrible breakers,” the “filthy swamps,” and the “heroic flood” place a powerful image of the Northwest in the reader’s mind (Winthrop 1). After referencing Winthrop, Egan contrasts this image with today's dull, lifeless area dominated by human construction. He says: "The struggle from the mountains to the sea is now considerably more indirect, with concrete obstacles at every major turn and no longer 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. Internet. October 30, 2011.Egan, Timothy. Good rain, through 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. Rep. in 19th century literary criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Flight. 210. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literary Resource Center. Internet. October 23, 2011.Pickering, Sam. “Signatures of Experience.” Sewanee Review 105.1 (1997): 142. Literary Reference Center. Internet. October 31, 2011. Winthrop, Theodore. The canoe and the saddle or Klalam and Klickatat. Tacoma: Franklin-Ward Company, 1993. eBook.