What the River Keeps
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A reclusive biologist returns to her childhood home on the Elwha River, where she untangles her mysterious past. A new novel from the award-winning author of Sugar Birds, “an engrossing tale” (Kirkus Reviews), and Leaning on Air, “an exquisitely nuanced love story” (BookTrib).
Hildy Nybo is a successful biologist, her study of the Pacific Northwest’s wild fish both a passion and a career. But behind her professional brilliance, Hildy’s reclusive private life reflects a childhood fraught with uncertainty. Haunted by the confusion of her early years, she now records her life in detailed diaries and clings to memory-prompting keepsakes.
Then her mother’s health fails, and Hildy accepts a job near her childhood home, joining a team of scientists who will help restore her beloved Elwha River after two century-old dams fall. There Hildy settles into a cabin on her family’s rustic resort—a place she both loves and dreads, for reasons she can’t fully explain.
When a local artist rents an adjacent cabin for her pottery studio, Hildy resists the intrusion—until intriguing Luke Rimmer arrives to help with the cabin’s renovation. Now a few years beyond a tragedy that brought him to his knees, Luke recognizes a kindred soul in Hildy. As he earns her trust, they uncover her mysterious history, and Hildy dares to wonder if she can banish her shadows—and follow her river’s course to freedom.
- A compelling story of forgiveness, redemption, and overcoming painful secrets that explores the beauty of the natural world
- A poignant and emotive contemporary novel perfect for fans of Delia Owens and William Kent Krueger
- Includes discussion questions for book clubs
Praise for this book
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A young woman finds love, faith, and freedom when she confronts the painful truth about her past in Bostrom’s novel.
Fisheries biologist Hildy Nybo grew up on her family’s fishing resort on the Elwha River near Olympic National Park in Washington State. She sometimes sees eerie “shadows” others can’t, and, doubting her own mind and memory, keeps detailed diaries and hoards strange keepsakes—stones, feathers, and yard-sale finds. Despite a successful scientific career, she lives like a hermit, with only a canary for company.When Hildy’s offered the dream job of lead project biologist with the ambitious Elwha River restoration project, she must return to the scene of past emotional traumas, including the disappearance of her beloved father when she was 14. Her unstable, hypercritical mother is falling into dementia, and the family business and property will be swept away forever in a couple of years when the Elwha Dam is demolished to allow salmon to return to their ancestral spawning grounds far upstream.
Soon after returning home, she meets tall, handsome Luke, a former fisherman turned carpenter and farmer after the tragic deaths of his wife and young daughters on their boat. Luke is entranced by Hildy’s ethereal beauty and gentle spirit, and he patiently coaxes her out of her self-imposed isolation despite her many attempts to rebuff him. Navigating obstacles, sidetracks, misunderstandings, and shocking revelations, they slowly begin to trust in each other.Bostrom’s writing is vivid: Windshield wipers in a rainstorm “whapped like a terrier’s tail”; grieving Luke wears “suffering’s dark cloak.” The author deftly captures the way slight gestures can convey strong feelings and evokes the magnificence of the Olympic Peninsula . . . Though the trope of two damaged souls finding healing and romance in each other is nothing new, readers will find this version moving and satisfying.
A touching love story.