The River Wife by Jonis Agee
Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary: When the earthquake brings Annie Lark’s Missouri house down on top of her, she finds herself pinned under the massive roof beam, facing certain death. Rescued by French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme, Annie learns to love the strong, brooding man and resolves to live out her days as his “River Wife.”
More than a century later, in 1930, Hedie Rails comes to Jacques’ Landing to marry Clement Ducharme, a direct descendant of the fur trapper and river pirate, and the young couple begin their life together in the very house Jacques built for Annie so long ago. When, night after late night, mysterious phone calls take Clement from their home, a pregnant Hedie finds comfort in Annie’s leather-bound journals. But as she reads of the sinister dealings and horrendous misunderstandings that spelled out tragedy for the rescued bride, Hedie fears that her own life is paralleling Annie’s, and that history is repeating itself with Jacques’ kin.
Among the family’s papers, Hedie encounters three other strong-willed women who helped shape Jacques Ducharme’s life–Omah, the freed slave who took her place beside him as a river raider; his second wife, Laura, who loved money more than the man she married; and Laura and Jacques’ daughter, Maddie, a fiery beauty with a nearlyuncontrollable appetite for love. Their stories, together with Annie’s, weave a haunting tale of this mysterious, seductive, and ultimately dangerous man, a man whose hand stretched over generations of women at a bend in the river where fate and desire collide.
Commentary: More evidence of my laziness–I began this review on April 7th! It’s been about two months since I’ve read it, and in fact, I never finished it, which isn’t to say that it was a bad novel.
The beginning was very exciting. Annie Lark and Jacques Ducharme’s story was romantic and adventurous, everything the book jacket promised. However their relationship quickly goes downhill through various bad events and the novel couples this with flashes to 1930, where Hedie Rails is reading Annie Lark’s journals. Many of the events in the two womens’ lives correlate and play off each other–the stories are fast paced and after awhile, a great feeling of dread begins enveloping the narrative.
With the added presence of the occasional ghost or supernatural working, creepily and well worked in, the novel entered a different realm, becoming less high romance/adventure and more… suspenseful.
I read about 9/10 of the way through this book before I had to return it to the library. At this point, however, I’m not sure if I’m going to pick it back up and finish the ending. The dread and the suspense wasn’t very good for right before bedtime reading, and that’s about the only time I have left right now for reading.
Definitely worth your time.
