The River Witch - A Review

Title:  The River Witch            
Author:  Kimberly Brock               
Source:  Netgalley

Goodreads Summary:   A good measure of gentle craziness and well-meaning magic are called for when Roslyn Byrne’s career as a professional ballet dancer is ended by a car wreck and a miscarriage, leaving her lost and grieving. She needs a new path, but she doesn’t have the least idea how or where to start. With some shoving from her very Southern mama, she immures herself for the summer on Manny’s Island, Georgia, one of the Sea Isles, to recover.

There Roslyn finds a ten-year-old girl, Damascus, who brings alligators, pumpkins and hoodoo into her sorry life.

Roslyn rents a house from Damascus’s family, the Trezevants, a strange bunch. One of the cousins,
Nonnie, who works in the family’s market, sees things Roslyn is pretty sure she shouldn’t, and knows things regular people don’t. Between the Trezevant secrets and Damascus’s blatant snooping and meddling, Roslyn finds herself caught in a mysterious stew of the past and present, the music of the river, and the dead and the dying who haunt the riverbank as she reckons with her fraught history to discover what she wants in life.

My thoughts:  I really enjoyed this book quite a bit.  It was a gently moving book, full of lost souls, a river, and an alligator. Roslyn washes up on the shores of Manny's Island (not literally) to find it inhabited by a family with its own problems.  Roslyn has chosen this place to hide from the world, and heal from the loss of her child and her career.  She meets Damascus (named for the river by her mother), a little girl who is just as lost as Roslyn is.  The other characters of importance are Urey, who is Damascus's father and Ivy, Damascus's aunt.  Everyone in this book is searching for something more - and by the end of the book you hope they find it. 

The most beautiful part of the book is the legend surrounding Roslyn when she moves in.  Damascus believes Roslyn can call the alligators to her, and that the alligators feed on broken hearts.  I loved this passage, with its legends and mystery, and the idea of the melancholy eating alligators.

I think this is a great summer read, when it is really hot outside and you have a breeze blowing through your windows at night.   It is magical, lyrical, and lovely.