River, Cross My Heart: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
by Breena Clarke

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Book Summary Information

• ISBN13: 9780316899987
• Condition: USED - Very Good
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Book Reviews of River, Cross My Heart: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

Book Review: Enticing novel
Summary: 5 Stars

Johnnie Mae loves to swim. She longs to swim at the all-white swimming pool instead of the Potomac River. She would stare at the swimmers at the pool which is across the street from her Aunt Ina's house. Always working and always watching out for her youngest sister, Johnnie Mae longs for more. Then when Clara, her sister drowned one afternoon when all the kids were swimming at the river, Johnnie Mae tries to deal with her guilt and memories. She befriends a new girl who reminded her of Rat ~~ the nickname she has bestowed on her sister ~~ and they grow up.

It is a neat insight to life back in the 1920s. It is beautifully written ~~ you see the world from Johnnie Mae's eyes as well as from her mother's eyes. It is a journey that lingers long after you've turned the last page. It's a book I highly recommend for everyone to read this summer! Perfect book for the poolside reading!

6-8-04

Summary of River, Cross My Heart: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

After Clara drowns, the river is never the same, and Johnnie Mae hovers on the edge of womanhood wondering if she'll be able to get past her guilt and emptiness. In an eloquent passage, Clarke writes, "Losing a loved one, a family member, is like losing a tooth. After a while, those teeth remaining shift and lean and spread out to split the distance between themselves and the other teeth still left, trying to close up spaces."

Bits of wisdom like this are the book's charm. Most remarkable are the church scenes, which Clarke renders almost purely in the give-and-take of voices: the booming preacher's sermon ("The people we love, we only borrowing them"), and the congregation's "Praise Jesus, Amen" exclamations. The author based her novel on stories passed down in Georgetown--tales of that area's first black churches, founded when people decided they wanted their own place of worship, and implicitly their own God. In church the novel takes flight. Elsewhere River, Cross My Heart suffers from clumsy, purple prose, and a plot that moves forward in labored fits and starts. Clarke painstakingly tries to re-create this past world, but sometimes it seems her duty to history is holding her back, bogging her down in period-piece details. In the effortless church scenes, history loses its gravity and is absorbed by grace. --Emily White

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