The River Knows Your Name - by Kelly Mustian

About the Book

"From the acclaimed author of The Girls in the Stilt House comes a long-awaited novel both atmospheric and lyrical, a haunting Southern story about memory, family secrets, and fierce and fragile love. For nearly thirty years, Nell has kept a childhood promise to never reveal what she and Evie found tucked inside a copy of Jane Eyre in their mother's bookcase-a record of Evie's birth naming a stranger as her mother. But lately, Nell has been haunted by hazy memories of their early life in Mississippi, years their reclusive mother, Hazel, has kept shrouded in secrecy. Evie recalls nothing before their house on Clay Mountain in North Carolina, but Nell remembers abrupt moves, odd accommodations, and the rainy night a man in a dark coat and a hat pulled low climbed their porch steps with a very little girl-Evie-then left without her. In dual storylines, Nell, forty-two in 1971, reaches into the past to uncover dangerous, long-buried secrets, and Becca, a young mother in the early 1930s, presses ahead, each moving toward 1934, the catastrophic year that would forever link them. From a windswept ghost town long forgotten, to a river house in notorious Natchez Under-the-Hill, to a moody nightclub stage, Evie's other mother emerges from the shadows of Depression-era Mississippi in a story of hardship and perseverance, of betrayal and trust, and of unexpected redemption in a world in which the lines between heroes and culprits are not always clearly drawn"--

Book Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of The Girls in the Stilt House comes a long-awaited novel both atmospheric and lyrical, a haunting Southern story about memory, family secrets, and fierce and fragile love.

For nearly thirty years, Nell has kept a childhood promise to never reveal what she and Evie found tucked inside a copy of Jane Eyre in their mother's bookcase--a record of Evie's birth naming a stranger as her mother. But lately, Nell has been haunted by hazy memories of their early life in Mississippi, years their reclusive mother, Hazel, has kept shrouded in secrecy. Evie recalls nothing before their house on Clay Mountain in North Carolina, but Nell remembers abrupt moves, odd accommodations, and the rainy night a man in a dark coat and a hat pulled low climbed their porch steps with a very little girl--Evie--then left without her.

In dual storylines, Nell, forty-two in 1971, reaches into the past to uncover dangerous, long-buried secrets, and Becca, a young mother in the early 1930s, presses ahead, each moving toward 1934, the catastrophic year that would forever link them.

From a windswept ghost town long forgotten, to a river house in notorious Natchez Under-the-Hill, to a moody nightclub stage, Evie's other mother emerges from the shadows of Depression-era Mississippi in a story of hardship and perseverance, of betrayal and trust, and of unexpected redemption in a world in which the lines between heroes and culprits are not always clearly drawn.

Review Quotes

"The River Knows Your Name is a captivating tale of love, loss and found family set in the lush and wild Mississippi Delta. Mustian's plucky, determined female characters grip your heart. You won't be able to put the book down until the last puzzle piece of their dual-timeline family mystery clicks into place." -- Emily Matchar, author of In the Shadow of the Greenbrier

"Kelly Mustian is a flat-out master storyteller. With a plot as woven and tumultuous as river current, this story is a profoundly human tale simply dripping with will and strength and heart. Mustian's storytelling insists there is magnificence amidst darkness if we only persevere. I am a fan." -- Andrew J. Graff, author of True North and Raft of Stars

"With masterful prose, Kelly Mustian weaves together a generational saga that explores the ties that bind and the forces that seek to tear them apart. The River Knows Your Name is a richly atmospheric tapestry of hidden pasts, resilient spirits, and the human heart's proclivity for tenacity and truth." -- Meagan Church, bestselling author of The Girls We Sent Away and The Last Carolina Girl

"A well-woven story that also plumbs the depths of the human heart, intertwining the power and wildness of the natural world and the risks people take for love. A novel about both running from the past and running after it, The River Knows Your Name woke me up early and kept me up late." -- Ash Davidson, author of Damnation Spring