Bonnie Jo Campbell

Margo Crane, a beauty and uncanny markswoman takes to the Stark River after being complicit in the death of her father and embarks on an odyssey in search of her vanished mother in this novel from the National Book Award finalist. 30,000 first printing.

A Novel

Once Upon a River

Melody Izard

** spoiler alert **
           Margo Crane is a more modern day Huckleberry Finn. Well OK - the author would rather say Annie Oakley - but I don't know Annie Oakley's story very well, and hey?, did a river play much of a part in Ms. Oakley's tale? Regardless - the books I have been reading have been flowing into each other - and this is no exception. I just finished Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone, which was much bleaker - for sure - but then there is nothing promising about Margo's life in Once Upon a River. You're able to read this story and hunger for more information about each of the characters you glimpse: Smoke, Fishbone, and her mother for mercy's sake! And then you finish the book and feel sort of warm and then .... what the ??? That girl is pregnant and living in an old rickety houseboat with no visible means of support and has slept with a bunch of old men and is still about to get involved with one she should stay away from. She has shot the tip of someone's penis off and is partially responsible for her father's death .... and somehow you were able to read the book and enjoy the float down the river without worrying so much about her - when really you might should have been.

Once Upon a River A Novel

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