Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson
WHERE THE RIVERS MERGE. By Mary Alice Monroe. William Morrow. 352 pages. $30, hardcover.
This is a lovely book, a well-written novel that spans 80 years of a remarkable woman’s life in the South Carolina Low Country. We first meet Eliza Rivers when she’s eight years old, in 1908, and gradually learn the story that brought her to 1988, when she’s fighting to make sure the beloved estate where she grew up – with all its natural wonders – will live long after she is gone.
Be forewarned: Eliza doesn’t finish telling her rich, complicated story in Where the Rivers Merge. There’s a Book Two coming, and when you reach the end of Book One of the saga, you’ll impatiently await the next.
You may be familiar with Mary Alice Monroe’s books. I was not.
She’s written more than 30 works of fiction, for adults and for children. She has a slew of awards, including induction into the South Carolina Academy of Authors Hall of Fame, the Southern Book Prize for fiction and the International Book Award for Green Fiction.
Most of Monroe’s books, so I am told, tell captivating stories about people, and they also do more. Her specialty is sometimes called “environmental fiction.” The stories she tells weave in information about the natural world and gently remind readers of the importance of taking better care of it. Her usual procedure has been to research an endangered species, do volunteer work with those trying to save it and then figure out a way to work all she’s learned into a story involving interesting people and events.
As she describes, she writes about Mother Nature and human nature.
Her most famous novel to date is The Beach House, which became a made-for-TV movie in 2018 and was the start of a popular series. Sea turtles play an important role in that one.
The offer of this review copy from William Morrow intrigued me. This is the first time Monroe has written what the publishers aptly call an “American Epic.” In an author’s note, she explains that the increasing threats posed by climate change prompted her to expand her approach, to go beyond telling the story of one species so that she can make important points about the urgency of protecting all our natural resources.
Where the Rivers Merge accomplishes that goal beautifully. Monroe’s story makes us care deeply about the strong, determined Eliza Rivers, and also to care about her family’s home, Mayfield, in the lush coastal area in South Carolina now known as the ACE Basin – where the basins of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers come together amid marshes, wetlands and forests that are home to many endangered species and other wildlife.
Eliza grows up there, a tomboy, riding horses, hiding in live oak trees, swimming in ponds and spending time with the boys and with the daughter of the Black man who managed the plantation for her father. All this infuriates her mother, who had grown up in Charleston learning to be more ladylike, more proper.
Now at 88, with both her brothers gone, Eliza is determined to protect Mayfield, even if it means taking a stand against her own son, who would rather sell the land that see it put into a conservation easement or become part of a wildlife refuge.
Eliza is used to fighting for what she believes is right. As she tells her story, vividly, to two young women in her family, we come to know both Eliza and this land she loves. When she was born in 1900, memories and effects of the Civil War and its aftermath were still strong in South Carolina. So were prejudices against and limitations on women and Black people, and we see those play out as Eliza grows up and begins to make her way in life.
We learn about Eliza and generations of her family through Eliza’s account to her young relatives of 80 years of an eventful life: joys and sorrows, love, turmoil, happiness and disappointments. And, in a most enjoyable way, we also learn about the eagles, the waterfowl, the deer, the snakes, the Marsh Tacky horses and the other creatures that thrive in that haven of forests, swamps, marshes and estuaries.
The Rivers’ End: Book Two can’t arrive soon enough for me.