KDL Recommends

Once Upon a River: A Novel

ISBN: 0393079899

Title: Once Upon a River: A Novel

Author: Bonnie Jo Campbell

KDL Description:

I loved Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell. It’s the story of a 16 year old girl who essentially becomes orphaned and decides to take control of her life. With her grandfather’s handmade boat and her uncle’s stolen rifle, she takes to the river behind her childhood home. The author lives in Kalamazoo and our young lady ends up on the Kalamazoo River.
-Sara Lee at Caledonia

Amazon Description:

From the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist—an odyssey of a novel about a girl’s search for love and identity.

Bonnie Jo Campbell has created an unforgettable heroine in sixteen-year-old Margo Crane, a beauty whose unflinching gaze and uncanny ability with a rifle have not made her life any easier. After the violent death of her father, in which she is complicit, Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother. But the river, Margo’s childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a young woman traveling alone, and she must be strong to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to the decision of what price she is willing to pay for her choices.