Deliverance (1970) is the debut novel of American writer James Dickey, who had previously published poetry.

[3] Narrated in the first person by Ed Gentry, a graphic artist and one of the four main characters, the novel opens with him and three friends, all middle-aged, middle-class men who live in a large city in Georgia, planning a weekend canoe trip down the fictional Cahulawassee River in the northwest Georgia wilderness.

Besides Ed, the protagonists are insurance salesman Bobby Trippe, soft drink executive Drew Ballinger, and landlord Lewis Medlock, a physically fit outdoorsman who has promoted the canoe trip.

At a gas station in a mountain hamlet, Drew sees a local albino boy playing a banjo.

He gets out his own guitar and plays a duet with the boy, who appears to be intellectually disabled, and possibly inbred, but with great musical skills.

The men arrange with local mechanics, the Griner brothers, to drive the foursome's cars to the fictitious town of Aintry, where the canoe voyage is scheduled to end two days later.

Sometime that afternoon, Bobby and Ed pull the canoe over to take a break and let Lewis and Drew catch up after a small separation.

Lewis wants to bury the body, arguing that if they inform the police, they might be convicted by a jury consisting of the dead man's relatives.

Ed briefs Bobby about taking Lewis downriver in the remaining canoe at first light in order to avoid being shot.

However Ed has been continually having homicidal thoughts about killing Bobby, fantasizing about shooting him with the dead man's rifle, or stabbing him with a knife and eviscerating his innards and genitalia, and he reflects this desire to kill him in his harsh rebukes towards the fat useless country club-dwelling Bobby.

Some time later, the men reach Aintry, where they explain that they suffered a canoeing accident at a falls upriver and that their friend Drew must have drowned.

They claim to have piled all four men into the remaining aluminum canoe, which suffered an accident wherein Drew was lost and assumed drowned.

Kirkus Reviews wrote that "James Dickey's first novel is an ambitious tale of adventure in which character is tested, quite literally, if preposterously, through action.

"[4] Literary critic, philosopher, and theorist Fredric Jameson reviewed the book in a 1972 essay[5] and used it for an extensive analysis of contemporary American society.

It was directed by John Boorman and starred Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox.