In the River Sweet: A Novel
by By Henley, Patricia
Category: Fiction , Literary

From the author of the National Book Award finalist Hummingbird House comes a novel about an Indiana family swept up in the rapids of history - both the social and spiritual upheavals of present-day America and the bitter legacy of the war in Vietnam.At mid-life, Ruth Anne Bond is still passionately in love with her husband, Johnny, deeply involved in her church, and close to her daughter, Laurel. But one day she receives a message that threatens the foundations of her marriage - a message she has craved and dreaded for thirty years:Dear Mrs. Ruth Anne, I believe you are my mother.What emerges is a secret dating back to 1968, when nineteen-year old Ruth Anne was a volunteer in a French convent in Saigon and where, at Tet, the celebratory pop of firecrackers gave way to the sound of gunfire. As Ruth Anne struggles to come to terms with her past - and Johnny grapples with his own memories of the war - Patricia Henley crafts a sensitive and beautifully written meditation on family and faith, and what it means to be moral in a world of conflicting moral codes.