Thanks to author Patricia Kullberg[1] for her gripping novel, Girl in the River.[2] This book is riveting. Mae Rose is a poor, small-town girl, orphaned in her teens. Her life in Portland, Oregon in the 1940s and 50s becomes an inferno filled with darkness and evil. The Great Depression and rotten luck gang up on her as she slogs through deep and hazardous trenches. The tale is true to Portland’s history—a history with a dark under-belly of crime and corruption. It is true to Portland’s place—a place where opulent mansions line steep hills—and a place where caves are carved out in Sullivan’s Gulch and canvas tents are strung up. In tents and in caves, people in great need huddle together beneath relentless downpours of rain, sleet and society’s neglect.

Poverty in Depression racked Mill City didn’t trap Mae Rose, but the big city of Portland closed in on her fast. Starvation and a bitter winter imposed blockades that narrowed Mae’s options, and soon the only choices facing her were bad, terrible and worse.

The story is told in straight, hard-hitting prose and in short chapters that maintain the rapid journey through tough lives and harder times. While Mae contends with one haymaker after another, you and I, with our eyes and hearts as witness, must also cope with the weight of the blows. And the blows are incessant. From the cataracts of the North Santiam River to the slow ceaseless flow of the polluted Willamette, we are in the middle of a flood and at risk of drowning. The maelstrom is dizzying—the force irresistible. To survive, deal with it—deal with starvation. Deal with privation. Deal with shutting down your soul and becoming what you do not want to be. Deal with breaking down completely in the endless quest to keep hunger at bay. And, finally, deal with the fact that from time to time, despite precautions, the risk comes to life. A fetus inside you halts the menstrual cycle. What will you do about that?

Mae’s plight is impossible to ignore. Growing up by the rushing North Santiam, Mae knew that her mother was no angel. But the mother’s undeniable love for her daughter remains a steadfast glimmer that will not expire. And Mae’s mother gave her child a perfect gift. She taught her to swim!

Read this novel. You will see and feel what it is like to face the choice in the flood. I am enriched and grateful having been there up close inside this story.


Image: A promotional photo on author Patricia Kullberg’s Facebook page.[3] I hope you “Like” it.

[1] See: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14044757.Patricia_Kullberg

[2] Available at: http://www.powells.com/book/girl-in-the-river-9781941072240/1-6 - or at Amazon & in stores

[3] See: https://www.facebook.com/patricia.kullberg.author/