Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood
Starred Review. Grade 8 Up—Historical fiction can be a hard sell, but this gem of a novel-in-verse is indeed worth selling. It is set against the backdrop of a Gilded Age playground for society's upper crust, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club of Pennsylvania's Lake Conemaugh. The cross-class romance between Celestia, daughter of a wealthy businessman and his obedient society wife, and Peter, summer help and son of a miner from the valley below, is absorbing. It is, however, not the entirety of this rich tale of a real-life natural disaster, the Johnstown Flood of 1889. The flood lies in wait throughout the narrative as allusions are made to the weakness of the dam miles above the working-class shantytowns below. After an unfortunate family situation separates Celestia and Peter the summer of their meeting, she returns to the lake for the summer of 1889 ready to disavow her family and find her beloved. Readers will cheer for this young couple to beat the odds together, and they'll tear through the pages as the tension and drama of the approaching flood rise, oblivious to the exhaustive research and attention to historical detail beneath. This book's ability to wear so many hats—heart-tugging romance, nail-biting suspense novel, and social commentary (it is ripe for discussion about wealth and class in America or society's response to natural disaster) more than earns it a place on the shelves of all libraries serving teens.—Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT(c) Copyright 2010.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.