Athol Dickson River Rising

River Rising

Athol Dickson

Bethany, Jan 2006, $17.00

ISBN: 076420162X

In 1927 Reverend Hale Poser arrives in Pilotville, a stilt town in the Louisiana bayous, seeking his roots as the New Orleans orphan found evidence that his parents came from this remote swamp town. Strangers are not readily accepted as the integrated townsfolk cannot believe anyone from the outside would voluntarily come here unless they carry a hidden agenda. Still Hale obtains work as a janitor at the Pilotville Negro Infirmary and attends the African Assembly of God Church, but no one trusts him even with his stating he seeks his origins are here.

Rumors spread that he is a miracle worker when he assists on an extremely difficult birthing. When a newborn black is kidnapped, racial harmony disintegrates. Hale is upset with the abduction of the innocent, which seems similar to his history. He works as hard as anyone trying to rescue the child, but soon discovers that Pilotville has had many kidnappings of infants with a cover-up that goes beyond the encroaching flooding Mississippi. He keeps digging though he knows he could vanish as alligator bait in the nearby slough.

RIVER RISING is a great atmospheric historical thriller that grips the audience from the moment that the reader realizes this is not a backwater save the soul tale, but much more. The varying perspectives provide the audience with a taste of a 1920s isolated small-town living in what appears to be a racially harmonious place, but as differing points of view surface, this proves a facade. The who-done-it and its cover-up add depth to the story line, but it is the caring Hale who serves as the distrusted focus and catalyst of a terrific period piece.

Harriet Klausner