Read an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The River People (Unsolicited Press), published in the latest edition of The Pitkin Review: https://www.blurb.com/b/12028772-the-pitkin-review-event-horizon
More about The River People:
When the river takes you, you will know. That’s why my brother Henry didn’t make a sound. One moment he was fording the wagon across the river, next he was yanked down under, at the mercy of the current made mighty by autumn rain.
Rivers have no mercy. This is what the West has taught me.
Marilla travels the Oregon Trail against her will and marries at age fifteen. John, an Irish teenager, flees an abusive father and sails across oceans to the west coast of North America. Walter deserts the U.S. Army for Canada and a chance to redeem himself in the love of a First Nations woman.
Fiction, historical documents, memoir, and poetry weave together to tell these migrant stories. In a land where the rivers are the roads, each journey is marked by adversities and triumph, and love, choice, and chance impact the lives of generations to come. Haunting and lyrical, The River People excavates the myths and truths behind the 19th-century westward expansion into the Pacific Northwest.
Liz Kellebrew 