Rivers: A Novel
As a Mississippi native, award-winning short story writer and first-time novelist Smith makes good use of his home state’s milieu in this powerfully written apocalyptic tale about an unending southern storm. Smith imagines the devastation the Gulf Coast might experience if Hurricane Katrina marked the beginning of a continuous deluge of rain and wind, forcing the government to establish the Line, which isolates the South in flooding and lawlessness. Still haunted by the death of his wife and unborn child, a man named Cohen chooses to stay below the Line, where he avoids the chaos and ekes out a living in his unfinished house. Then a pair of teens ambush and nearly kill him, stealing his Jeep and ransacking his belongings. Left homeless, Cohen finds his way to a ramshackle trailer park controlled by a messianic figure named Aggie, from whose clutches Cohen frees the teens and several women for a perilous dash to safety above the Line. While Rivers is already inviting inevitable comparisons to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Smith’s canvas is broader and the story even more riveting. --Carl Hays