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candacesiegle_greedyreader's review
5.0
This is a re-read for me, and I enjoyed this novel just as much the second time. Jonis Agee is a remarkable writer, and this story of the women who live along the Mississippi in the bootheel of Missouri is not a pretty one, but it certainly keeps you glued to the page.
The first River Wife is Annie Lark, who barely survives the New Madrid Earthquake. She and Jacques Ducharme create a kind of Eden before the building of Jacques' Landing, the inn along the river. There is no snake in their world, it's the building of Jacques' dream. The other river wives will experience the reverberations for generations.
So good. I'm ready for another Jonis Agee novel!
~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader
The first River Wife is Annie Lark, who barely survives the New Madrid Earthquake. She and Jacques Ducharme create a kind of Eden before the building of Jacques' Landing, the inn along the river. There is no snake in their world, it's the building of Jacques' dream. The other river wives will experience the reverberations for generations.
So good. I'm ready for another Jonis Agee novel!
~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader
carolynf's review
4.0
Covers a Missouri family's generations from the early 1800s to 1950. Raises questions about inequality within marriage.
damsorrow's review
3.0
I like the reviewer below me (Emily) who did her review of this book on a plus and minus system. I have trouble with family history books that span generations--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I am looking deeply into your eyes--because it gets so hard to keep everyone straight, and because, let's be real, you never really care about the later generations. So many pluses for the earlier parts of this story, and for Omah the Pirate definitely, but not so much on the later tales (Dealie, Laura, etc.) because they don't grab nearly as much. Treat it like a Faulkner, lots of individual stories about country(wo)men getting royally f-ed, and you'll be much happier.
mverdoorn's review
4.0
The storyline is interesting - it starts with the New Madrid Earthquake and tells stories of a few generations.
wordnerdy's review
2.0
When a young girl's new husband keeps slipping away to run mysterious errands in Prohibition-era times, she finds a series of his great-grandmother's journals and begins to believe their lives are paralleled. Some other women who were part of his great-grandfather's life also come into the story. The first half of this book is very strong, but when random other women come into it and we lose sight of the new young wife (for several hundred pages), things start to falter. The ending also feels very, very rushed. B-.
mimi503's review
3.0
I was in one of Jonis' classes at St. Kate's and was very excited to see this new novel by her. I loved how it spanned so many years and told so many stories that were all related in one way or another. Some of the events were a little far fetched, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.
jenawesomesbookshelf's review
2.0
This book starting out as promising, but I felt like I was slogging through it after about the first third.
rdebner's review
5.0
It took me a little while to get into this book, since the way it started was not how I thought it would, based on reading the front flap. I am a big fan of multi-generational family sagas, and I think that this work of Agee's ranks up there with some of the best that I've read. I did find myself wishing for a visual tree of the characters, but then, that would have given away discoveries in the narrative. Prevailing themes of family (born and made) and of the ties to the land.