THE GIRL FROM THE RIVER
The line between fiction and reality is blurred in this tale of UCLA student Catherine Langley, who comes face to face with the character Angela Star from one of her mother’s well-revered novels. Catherine is a musician trying to finish college, meet someone she can feel passionate about, and help her father who is dealing with a mysterious, malaria-like ailment. Angela disappeared in a turbulent river in one of the novella stories but re-emerged for over one hundred years to touch people’s lives in surprising ways. As she finds herself in the real world, she begins to remember a life not told in the novella - a life with a lover and a son four hundred years before the fiction was even imagined.
The two women develop a fragile bond through their interactions with a family friend of the Langleys suffering from Alzheimers; Catherine’s flute instructor and her quantum physics teacher; Catherine’s mother, who must ultimately revise Angela’s story; a horse with a wound infected by an ancient sword; and a black, woodwind professor whose ancestry traces back to the last place Angela saw her son - Ciudad de Oro, a Spanish slave-trading post in 16th century Portuguese East Africa.
What seems impossible becomes a vibrant and heart-stopping reality against the backdrop of Southern California’s Santa Monica Mountains, the spring rush of the San Gabriel River and the rich Hadzabe tribal area along the Ruaha River in Tanzania. The dimensions of time flood and converge, leading everyone on Cat’s and Angela’s paths to a new place - at once terrifying, inexplicable, and true.
PRAISE FOR THE GIRL FROM THE RIVER…
“Once, I was a swimmer with a few hard experiences in the water. I was drawn into this story in part because of what I’ve learned practically and metaphorically about water, and because the characters are believable and their lines are strong. There are no giveaways here.”
– T. Clark
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“A quantum possibility and a young woman’s reality collide in this gripping tale. When an author’s daughter forms a relationship with a fictional character from one of her mother’s novels, it soon becomes apparent that their connections, separated by generations, run much deeper than anyone could have imagined. The Girl From the River is a tantalizing story that dives headfirst into the inter-dimensional realm.”
– Ted D. Berner, author of Proof the Novel
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“The descriptions in this fiction are so vivid I was transported into them: intriguing flute performances, sensitive treatment of race, religion and partner preference, and the possibility of quantum connections between distant geographies and centuries. As the characters worked through these challenges, I felt a yearning to be better myself.”
– Scott B. Jensen