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It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land.
Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast—stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border—has been brought to its knees. The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules.
Cohen is one who stayed. Unable to overcome the crushing loss of his wife and unborn child who were killed during an evacuation, he returned home to Mississippi to bury them on family land. Until now he hasn’t had the strength to leave them behind, even to save himself.
But after his home is ransacked and all of his carefully accumulated supplies stolen, Cohen is finally forced from his shelter. On the road north, he encounters a colony of survivors led by a fanatical, snake-handling preacher named Aggie who has dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region.
Realizing what’s in store for the women Aggie is holding against their will, Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s captives across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that may pose the greatest threat of all.
Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.
- Sales Rank: #336010 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-09-10
- Released on: 2013-09-10
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
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
Review
Best Books of 2013 (Daily Candy)
Best Books of 2013 (Book Riot)
Top Ten Books of 2013 (The Capital Times)
Best Books of 2013 (Hudson Booksellers)
“Every once in a while an author comes along who’s in love with art and the written language and image and literary experiment and the complexity of his characters and the great mysteries that lie just on the other side of the physical world, writers like William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx. You can add Michael Farris Smith’s name to the list.” (James Lee Burke, New York Times bestselling author of Creole Belle and The Tin Roof Blowdown )
“The lightning whips and the thunder bellows and the rain attacks in the water-stained pages of Michael Farris Smith’s Rivers, a hurricane-force debut novel that will soak you with its beautiful sadness and blow you away with its prescience about the weather-wild world that awaits us.” (Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon, The Wilding, and Refresh, Refresh )
“Smith’s incantatory prose . . . propel[s] this apocalyptic narrative at a compelling clip until the very last page.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“[Rivers] is a wonderfully cinematic story—but there are no Hollywood clichés in Smith’s prose or plot. He portrays each character as a human being with a back story and personality: They may make choices that appall or frustrate us, but the characters are rounded and real . . . Smith resorts to no formula, and his ability to keep you guessing about what will happen next adds tension to long stretches of honed prose. He also manages to make 300 pages of relentless rain so real that you’re surprised your fingers aren’t pruney when you look up from this engrossing story.” (The Washington Post)
“Michael Farris Smith’s powerful Rivers is the kind of book that lifts you up with its mesmerizing language then pulls you under like a riptide. . . . It’s not surprising that early reviews have name-dropped Cormac McCarthy’s The Road . . . In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Sandy [and] with meteorologists issuing doomsday scenarios about the fate of coastal cities, Rivers succeeds as both a stunning work of speculative fiction and a grim forecast of a coming national catastrophe.” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
“Anyone who was on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina will recognize the world portrayed in Rivers . . . The novel builds from this tense, atmospheric beginning to a harrowing conclusion, the kind of book that will soak into you like a relentless downpour. Smith’s storm-swept prose and desolate setting will remind readers of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but there is something in Cohen that reminds us of a Larry Brown protagonist, burned out yet determined, and something especially in his passage through the fugitive land that recalls TV’s ‘The Walking Dead’. Events like Katrina and 9/11 stoked the country’s imagination for survivalist stories like Rivers, so it seems fitting that this promising Mississippi writer has come back to the source and paid homage, in his Southern Gothic way, to the region’s bull-headed will to keep going.” (The Clarion-Ledger (Mississippi))
"While there are obvious similarities to Cormac McCarthy, Smith most puts me in mind of his fellow Mississippian Larry Brown. They share the same smooth-worn grace running toward minimalism and offhand masculine power." (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
“The momentum of this book is propulsive. . . . Most impressive of all is the fact that Farris Smith managed to capture my attention with an opening line—and, for that matter, an opening passage, and an opening chapter—about the weather.” (The Paris Review)
“[A] powerfully written apocalyptic tale. . . . 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.” (Booklist)
“Smith’s vision of a post-apocalyptic society left behind by civilization is expertly executed. This world is chilling—all the more so for its believability—and it is peopled by compelling, fully realized characters, some of whom only exist in the form of ghosts. In contrast to this bleak world, Smith’s prose is lush, descriptive and even beautiful. A compelling plot, fuelled by a mounting sense of tension and hope in the face of increasing hopelessness, will keep readers engrossed to the very end.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))
“Smith’s passion for the South is palpable, and the native Mississippian writes as if in a part homage, part plea to save the splendor of his home state. With stunning prose and nearly perfect pacing, Rivers is an uncommonly good debut, forcing the reader to consider not only the consequences of climate change but also ponder the limits of the human spirit.” (Summerset Review)
“Smith’s passion for the South is palpable, and the native Mississippian writes as if in a part homage, part plea to save the splendor of his home state. With stunning prose and nearly perfect pacing, Rivers is an uncommonly good debut.” (Summerset Review)
"Rivers is a novel that forces the reader to face terrifying possibilities and haunts long after the last page. Smith captures the essence of humanity in an almost post-apocalyptic world and his writing earns him a well-deserved place next to greats like William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy." (DeSoto Magazine)
"Smith captures the essence of humanity in an almost post-apocalyptic world and his writing earns him a well-deserved place next to greats like William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy." (DeSoto Magazine)
“What if the devastation of Hurricane Katrina were not a one-time anomaly of ferocious weather, a crumbling infrastructure and an ineffective, incompetent national recovery response, but the first of endless waves of destructive coastal weather? What if the impact of climate change were not centuries away, but right now? . . . The satisfaction of Rivers comes from Smith's finesse in creating a realistic thriller within the fiction genre of cataclysm. His scenes are as real as 24-hour Weather Channel videos.” (ShelfAwareness.com)
“A post-apocalyptic world a la The Road by Cormac McCarthy (indeed, Smith's prose style has some of the same hard-muscled, grim texture of McCarthy's words).”— (The Quivering Pen)
“A story so powerful, I thought it was going to ignite every time I picked the damn thing up. Rivers will be compared to some of the greatest stories ever written by writers of generations past and present, but what can’t be compared is the power and skill that lie within its pages. The words will shear your eyes and brand your mind, and you’ll be scarred by what you’ve read for days, weeks, even months after. This is an important book. Pick it up—I bet you won’t be able to put it down.” (Frank Bill, author of Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana )
“A story so powerful, I thought it was going to ignite every time I picked the damn thing up. Rivers will be compared to some of the greatest stories ever written by writers of generations past and present, but what can’t be compared is the power and skill that lie within its pages. This is an important book. Pick it up—I bet you won’t be able to put it down.” (Frank Bill, author of Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana )
“Take an environmental apocalypse, blow in the cadences of Ernest Hemingway and the vision of Cormac McCarthy, sweeten it with humanity, add a Southern twang, and you might get something close to Rivers. Michael Farris Smith’s debut novel is not only a great read; it’s a significant one.” (Anne Korkeakivi, author of An Unexpected Guest )
“This novel’s greatest strength is in Smith’s deep understanding of the traditions from which his inspiration springs and his ability to transform familiar tropes into something new. Like most good literature, Rivers uses these traditions and conventions in new ways that carve out new spaces and new possibilities.” (The Steel Toe Review)
“Fiction writers often tangle with how to write about the issues shaping the world we live in—war, poverty, oppression—while still preserving the creative energy that should propel a good story forward. How do we manage to write the world we live in while writing the worlds of our imaginations? In his debut novel, Rivers, Michael Farris Smith answers that question with confidence, writing about the effects of global warming while also offering a story that is unmistakably his own. . . . Rivers is a captivating novel, and its ravaged landscape is particularly believable. Farris Smith is meticulous in detailing the reshaped Gulf Coast region, the abandoned husks of buildings, and what happens to both man and nature when a world becomes untamed. . . . Richly written and engaging.” (Bookforum)
“Skillfully depicted . . . . Rivers is a chillingly realistic read and a surreal glimpse of one possible future.” (San Francisco Book Review)
“When reading Michael Farris Smith’s debut novel, Rivers, it’s natural to see the influence that his literary predecessors, masters of prose and tone, have had on Smith’s work. No influence is more apparent than that of Cormac McCarthy. In Smith’s chilling novel . . . the author is sparse with language, poignant with details and the narrative teeters between physical and abstract worlds. . . . Smith may be following the road set by McCarthy, but Rivers differentiates itself by offering a hopeful and nostalgic tenderness in a story of endurance that is startlingly relevant to our time.” (storySouth)
About the Author
Michael Farris Smith has been awarded the Transatlantic Review Award, Brick Streets Press Short Story Award, Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. He is a graduate of Mississippi State and the Center for Writers at Southern Miss. He lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters. Rivers is his first novel.
Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
"He read his own note. And then he said, 'I told you.'"
By Nathan Webster
I liked this book, and it was a good mix of escapism and strong writing. I will say that after the first 10 pages, I wondered if Cormac McCarthy was writing under a pen-name; but then I blinked and I was on page 93 (where the title above is quoted - my favorite line in the book). So I knew it was a good one.
Author Michael Farris Smith obeyed Elmore Leonard's rule - 'don't write what the reader's skip.' So the narrative is heavy on character, dialogue and activity, and the pages fly by. You know how people say, 'I couldn't put it down!' Well, I really didn't put it down - I finished it one long day and evening. It's fast paced, and he does a good job of parceling out a variety of twists and adventures so when one arc concludes, it leads right into another one.
If you're a McCarthy fan (and Smith clearly is), you'll appreciate Smith's specific style of writing: "When he was dressed, he walked into the kitchen and took a bottle of water from a cooler that sat where the refrigerator used to be and he drank half in one take and then put the bottle back into the cooler." If you've read McCarthy's "Blood Meridian (which I liked)," you'll recognize the patterns.
It's easy to make a comparison to McCarthy's apocalyptic "The Road," but "Rivers" is FAR superior (the books share a few plotlines). "Rivers" is simply more interesting, with better characters, a more developed concept and better writing. If you liked "Road" (I didn't), I think you'll really enjoy "Rivers." Also, James Lee Burke's excellent "The Tin Roof Blowdown" was probably an inspiration - one that Smith built on in a non-derivative way.
I appreciated the dystopian concept - that weather patterns have basically rendered everything south of Mississipi's northern border uninhabitable. He's not making any political statement, and there is no global warming plotline. It's a people story. It's a generally believable idea, and he carried it off with solid imagination.
What I found was a missing opportunity was how Smith dealt with the weather - storms and rain are constant, but I found that while he constantly mentioned bad weather, the characters never had to deal with it, beyond a few dramatic scenes. For anyone who's had to work in a driving rainstorm, you know it's almost impossible - yet these characters do that all the time, and that difficulty often didn't come across. I felt like Smith's strong writing enabled him to overshadow a few plot holes in that regard. And a few events happen through a bit-too-lucky coincedences. But overall I could suspend my disbelief.
This is a good example of a 300-page book that easily could have been 600 pages so it looked more "epic" on the bookshelf - but that would have been watered-down, losing the intensity that made it work. Smith and his editors did a great job of keeping this a tight, well-plotted narrative that never gets away from him.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Michael Farris Smith
By Tom T
Rivers, a novel by Michael Farris Smith is one of the most intense novels I have ever read. If I could give it 6 stars instead of 5 I would. The story takes place in the not so distant future in Louisiana. Weather patterns across the U.S. had changed over several years until hurricane after hurricane came ashore, one after the other. The storms destroyed much of the south with most people having been evacuated. The story revolves around one man who decided to remain and his encounters with others who likewise stayed or for one reason or another came back. Lawlessness and the lowest depths of humanity begin to take over. This is a well conceived and written adventure novel with great emotion and solid memorable characters.
This is not a story of just good fighting evil, a black and white Rambo story, but rather a real look at humanity in the face of desperation. It is also a love story that will bring many readers to tears. Smith is a writer of many gifts. I highly recommend Rivers.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
A very special story to enthrall, excite, contemplate and fully enjoy
By rgregg
One of the joys of being a "Vine" member is the opportunity to preview special novels by new writers prior to their publication. "Rivers" by Michael Farris Smith is something that is so powerful in so many ways that I hope my review encourages others to order this future award winning novel. This book will be on the list of award winners when 2013 closes because it is so unique and so current.
This book has many elements. The story opens as an ecological disaster story in which hurricanes and torrential and unrelenting rain has turned the deep South into a nearly uninhabitable area. We find our main character Cohen living in his damaged home with only his dog and a horse as company while he mourns the death of his wife and unborn daughter. The author opens up the complex Cohen slowly throughout the entire novel as we learn surprising and shocking things about his past and his current motivations.
His world is one where he scavenges supplies and needs from unusual sources such as a man named Charlie who is the living general store in a part of the country which has virtually been abandoned by the Federal government.Most of the population have headed toward "The Line" where they can live in a more normal world with electricity, food and support. Why some stay on the wrong side of "The Line" is fascinating as we begin to meet other characters.
Cohen picks up a young man and young girl and what happens after that changes the entire course of his life and becomes the driving force that moves the drama forward.
Things are taken from Cohen that he is determined to retrieve including family and personal items and we don't really understand why he is so motivated until late in the book where some shocking surprises occur.
What makes this book so special is that it is a magnificent moral study of what happens when people need to revert to some base desires to survive in a world that seems to be every person for themselves. We also find out through some beautifully written flashbacks why and how some of the characters ended up in their current situation. A fine example of this is when the story sends us back to Cohen and his late wife on a holiday in Venice, Italy. Those moments are deeply touching and bring superb insight into the star of this story.
It also presents questions as to what role the government should play in the face of natural disaster and the scary potential of those decisions.
As lyrically written as the book is, it also includes some moments of extreme violence that are necessary to adequately describe the lengths which people will go to to provide for themselves and/or their loved ones. It also has scenes of great tragedy and sadness and again those are important because the circumstances of the tale are not pretty enough to be painted over without such scenes.
The environmental conditions throughout the novel allow for some powerful and perilous situations where survival of some of the cast of characters are definitely in jeopardy. Flooding, wind, washed out bridges and roads are vividly described by Michael Farris Smith in scenes which will keep the reader on the edge of their seat.
It is almost impossible to guess where the plot is headed because whenever we anticipate the direction, Smith shocks us with twists and turns that propel the tale onto new roads. It's not a thriller or a love story, or a story of redemption or a tragedy or a heart stopper or a story of beauty among sadness. It is all of the above. It's a book to savor, to read slowly and quietly and to cherish. It will stay with you long after you put it down because you will be taken into the heart and mind of many of the players in the book and come to know them and understand them in a way that many books fail to achieve.
This book could have been exploitative and simple but Smith is a brilliant writer as he balances scenes of high drama with gorgeous writing that will touch anyone who reads it in many ways. Don't miss this book. Order it in advance and get ready for an experience that may not be matched this year.
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