Follow the River Home

Follow the River Home  by Corran Harrington  220 pages

At the heart of the beautifully, beautifully written novel, set along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico, is the sandhill crane. When Daniel Arroyo is eight year old, his neighbor, Helen Sedillo, teaches him about the sandhill cranes: “They’re heading to their winter home, Daniel, The river is like their road, only it’s called a flyway….If you save a place in the sky between April and November, they’ll come back again in the springtime.”

From the time he is eight, Daniel is searching for that road back home. It’s when he is eight that  his little sister, Carmen, dies. He suffers a form of PTSD from her death and believes it to be his fault.  As his family falls apart following her death, Daniel dabbles a bit with homosexuality with his best friend and neighbor across the street, Jeff.

Both boys are drafted and are sent to Vietnam. Daniel comes home, suffering from the most common form of PTSD, but Jeff does not. Daniel tries to live a normal life. He marries his high school sweetheart. Laura, and has a family. He still wrestles with unresolved homosexual tendencies. However, the one thing that gives him peace and helps him home is his work on the Rio Grande.

The river flowed in the irrigation ditch in front of his childhood home, and now he works collecting the water samples. It brings him peace and contentment that he cannot seem to find otherwise.

The book is broken into two parts. The first part, “The River Reader,” is a novella encompassing the events above. The second part, “The River Flyway” is an abrupt change. It’s mostly short stories which focus on other characters, like Jeff’s kid sister, Emily, and her battles with mental illness. I didn’t know who all the characters were and it was weird when the furniture in Daniels childhood home spoke. Still, the stories are beautifully written. Daniel is part of most of them and it’s near the end when readers learn what happened to cause Carmen’s death.

This book is so lyrical, moving and skillfully written I would give it 6 out of 5 stars, But because of the brusque change in voice, Follow the River Home gets 5 stars in Julie’s world.