The River We Remember
Rivers are always doing stuff!
Date read: March 2024
Date published: September 2023
Summary
In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder of its most powerful citizen, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling standalone novel…Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of midcentury American life, The River We Remember is an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home. (Goodreads)
My Take
Someone who saw me post about Five Decembers on social media recommended this book to me. In some ways, it’s similar—an emotionally reticent main character, a veteran of war who has seen it all and doesn’t want to look back. But the real main character of this book is the mid-50s small town America, Jewel, scarred by war and loss, beset by discrimination and anger and mistrust.
It’s a beautifully written book, painting a picture of post-war America in a way that’s both sympathetic and critical to the people who were navigating a new experience after the end of the war. But there’s also a mystery! We start the story by finding out that one of the town’s citizens is found floating in the river. Pretty quickly we learn that many people in the town could have committed the murder, and that the victim, Jimmy Quinn, is not missed by anyone, including possibly his family.
“Although there are many kinds of fish who make the Alabaster their home, the most aggressive are channel catfish. They’re mudsuckers, bottom feeders, river vultures, the worst kind of scavengers. Channel cats will eat anything. This is the story of how they came to eat Jimmy Quinn.”
Suspicion, without much evidence, ends up focusing on a Native American, Noah Bluestone. He has a Japanese wife, is not part of the small town’s social circles, and more or less gets pointed at for the crime for those reasons. We get a bit of a procedural here, with a female attorney, very much a rebel of the time, who is a compelling character, along with several other community members who are empathetic figures as this drama starts to push at the seams of the town.
The river, of course, is a metaphor. Isn’t it always? Like the river that runs through “it.” But this river represents the memories, stories, interpretations, histories, and ideas of these characters, and how they all run together to form the present day in this small town.
I loved the way the writer painted the picture of this Minnesota town, just a few years removed from a war that changed everyone’s lives permanently, and the way the river was a place where people went to hold, and release, their secrets.
“Even after the sun had set and the sky had gone from bruised purple to an indigo full of stars, they talked. There beside the silent flow of the Alabaster River, they split open the darkness inside both of them in which too many secrets had lain hidden.”
I felt a real sense of being in the mid-50s, in the middle of the country, while reading this. And Kruger brings a combination of beautiful prose and great storytelling to guide this story to a climactic peak.
My Rating
8/10 — this was my first book by Kruger, need to read more.