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When  I was in New York City this past May I attended a book signing event at Books of Wonder with a good dozen debut authors. Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards is one book that I picked up there because I simply couldn’t resist it.

One -  it’s free verse.

Two – it’s historical fiction.

Now some of you may be inwardly groaning to yourself because you don’t like free verse or historical fiction.  But for me it’s a match made in heaven.  A guarantee that I’ll read the book. I love free verse novels.  Adore.  Combine that with historical fiction and Three Rivers Rising was a no brainer purchase for me.

Dust jacket summary:

Sixteen-year-old Celestia vacations with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held inplace by an earthen dam.  Tired of the superficial cheer and sly judgements of the society crowd, she much prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel’s hired boy.  It’s a friendship she must keep secret – her parents would never approve – and when companionship turns to romance, it’s a love that could get Celestia disowned.

These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May 1889. After days of heavy rain, the dam fails, unleashing twenty million tons of water onto Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the valley below – the town where Peter lives with his father.

Told my multiple narrators, Jame Richards’s searing novel in poems explores a cross-class romance, the random hand of disaster, and a tragic and indelible event in American history.

What I really liked about Three Rivers Rising was how nostalgic it felt.  How I was really taken back in time not to just a different time but to a completely different way of thinking.  To a time where family appearances meant more than that actual family. Where one doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice the limb to save the tree, so to speak.  To a time where romance between the classes was merit for being disowned.  I loved the struggle between the characters as they simply tried to love each other.

I enjoyed the free-verse quite a bit. I always do. I have found with other readers that free-verse is something that either you love or hate.  I’m solidly on the love side.  However, I found the free -verse here to read more as prose rather than poetry making me wonder how the novel would have fared simply as prose.  But it’s fair to say that I’m glad it wasn’t prose but instead free-verse.

I had never heard of the Johnstown flood prior to reading Three Rivers Rising and Richards does an excellent job building up the tension prior to the dam breaking and describing the ensuing disaster and recovery. While Johnstown wasn’t the only city hit in this flood, there were more than 2,200 deaths in that area alone.  Reading about this incredible disaster against the backdrop of family and forbidden romance was exciting.

Jame Richards includes an author’s note, a South Dork Dam chronology, and further reading recommendations.  I have found that I like this kind of extra information in the historical fiction that I read.

I simply loved this book.

Links of interest: Jame Richards website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Free Verse Historical Fiction, Young Adult
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers. April 10, 2010
Hardcover, 304 pages. ISBN 0375858857
Copy source: Purchased from Books of Wonder, NYC
Three Rivers Rising is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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