Once Upon a River

(Paperback)

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Description

Meet Margo Crane a female Huckleberry Finn, a teenage Scout Finch as she single-handedly takes on a hostile world in this enthralling debut.
After the violent death of her father, in which she is complicit, Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother.

But the river, Margos childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman travelling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to deciding what price she is willing to pay for her choices.

Reviews

With all the fixings of a Johnny Cash song love, loss, redemption Campbell captures these Michiganders and their earthy, brutal paradise in a tale rich with insight Elle

An excellent American parable about the consequences of our favorite ideal, freedom. Jane Smiley, The New York Times

Irresistible As her odyseey unfolds, through encounters with the men she meets along the waybrawlers, boatmen, drug dealers, trappersshe tries to sort out what it means to have the power to end a human life when youve hardly begun your own. The New Yorker

the self-reliant teenage heroine of Once Upon a River made the book a beguiling and addictive read reminiscent of Winter Bones Ree Dolly or The Hunger Games Katnis Everdeen fascinating I found myself drawn to the pace of Campbells narrative as well as the haunting descriptions of the Stark River. Stylist

Vivid and mesmerizinga gripping story Entertainment Weekly

Margos earthy education and the profound complexities of her timeless dilemmas are exquisitely rendered and mesmerizingly suspenseful. A glorious novel destined to entrance and provoke Starred review, Booklist

Campbells precise eye for detail makes her descriptions of Margos travels utterly convincing, showing her readers that the loves of humans are as closely intertwined with the natural world as the emotions of love and hate We Love this Book

Author Bio

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of three previous books, including American Salvage, a National Book Award finalist.