The River Baptists
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
An engrossing novel of secrets, small communities and the consequences of living with the past.
Set in a small riverside community, The River Baptists tells the story of Rose, bunkered down in a borrowed house overlooking the river, grieving for her dead father and waiting for her baby to be born. It is also the story of Danny, another refugee from life elsewhere, hiding out from his violent father and dreaming of owning a block of land on the river. Then there are the river old-timers, who miss nothing and forget less, and a newcomer who cares nothing for the locals, or the secrets of the past. Set over the course of a long hot tense summer, when sparks constantly threaten to ignite bushfires, the tight-knit riverside community is set alight by confidences betrayed and a renewed age-old grudge.
And through it all flows the mysterious pulse of the river, indifferent, deep and calm, offering the possibility of life and death, renewal and rebirth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winner of the 2006 Australian/Vogel Literary Award, Castles (Falling Woman) spins a brooding and intricate contemporary saga about the denizens of an Australian riverside hamlet. Rose Baker, an author of women's erotica, lives alone and rents a small house from her sister Billie's boyfriend, James Mancini. After a brief and loveless fling with James, Rose discovers she's pregnant, but delays in telling Billie. Trying to escape from his abusive father, Danny Raine moved to the secluded village after faking his own drowning. Using the alias "Danny Reynolds," he operates a local water taxi and is attracted to the lonely Rose. But Rose takes up with Kane, a drug dealer with a shady past. The other residents of the town including a man who copes with the loss of his family by setting fires in the surrounding forest and their various relationships are deftly interwoven, though the climax is somewhat predictable. The "River Baptists" of the title euphoric churchgoers often found in their baptismal pools give the otherwise dour narrative a glimmer of hope and redemption.
