Whew! I finally got my new novel See Willy See sent off to the printer and ebook distributor. Seems like there are always new hoops to jump through, especially since I’m using a new print-on-demand organization. I may have to reformat my table of contents, but that’s pretty minor compared to days of saving and resaving in different formats to meet printer requirements. Anyhow, I just read Margie Lukas’s novel River People and I wanted to share my thoughts. I read her first and this is as good as her first. Wow!

River People

Coffins or arks? What will you choose to build?

In her historical novel, River People, Margaret Lukas harkens back to a time when women and children were barely more than chattel. It’s an old  story of women’s abuse at the hands of men, but Lukas makes it new by showing us into the heart and damaged mind of the primary male abuser.

Belonging challenges the characters each in her (or his) own way as they struggle to assert their identities. The central villain, Rev. Jackdaw, struggles with gender identity. Effie tries to think herself better than her neighbors, terrified that her life will become as hard as theirs. Henry, known as Chief, finds himself separate because he’s a half-breed. Bridget suffers from abandonment. Her parents left, her uncle died, she sent her own grandmother back to Ireland so she wouldn’t die, the Reverend calls her Rooster—even her name’s in question.

Bridget is the novel’s main character. Her parents left her behind when they immigrated to the U.S. She and her grandmother try to follow, but in America Bridget becomes, for all purposes, an orphan. But she maintains tenuous hope, unlike many of the other characters. Bridget believes in her mythological warrior heroine Nera, and in her connection to the natural world. “The river, Wilcox [a  tree] and all trees, the sky with flying stars, Jake [the ox]. It was all connected and all of it loved her. She was at home in the wide world . . . . when a person fits under heaven, she fits everywhere.”

Throughout the novel, Lukas forces her characters to make excruciating choices. When survival seems impossible, do you acquiesce or do you fight death? When forced to do—or even witness—cruel things, do you come to enjoy cruelty or can you resist? Can one always choose? Are some cruelties so severe that they warp the mind forever? Do fear and pain make cruelty inevitable? How does one small act of cruelty send ripples that expand into more and more lives? 

Coffins or arks. In an historical tour de force I couldn’t put down, Margaret Lukas asks existential questions at the core of our humanity, and she does it with empathy and understanding.

River People Lukas’s second novel is as good as her first and that’s pretty great.