Cover of River of Heaven

River of Heaven

"You have to know the rest of my story, the

part I can't yet bring myself to say. A story

of a boy I knew a long time ago and a

Read more

brother I loved and then lost."

Past and present collide in Lee Martin's highly anticipated novel of a man, his brother, and the dark secret that both connects and divides them. Haunting and beautifully wrought, River of Heaven weaves a story of love and loss, confession and redemption, and the mystery buried with a boy named Dewey Finn.

On an April evening in 1955, Dewey died on the railroad tracks outside Mt. Gilead, Illinois, and the mystery of his death still confounds the people of this small town.

River of Heavenbegins some fifty years later and centers on the story of Dewey's boyhood friend Sam Brady, whose solitary adult life is much formed by what really went on in the days leading up to that evening at the tracks. It's a story he'd do anything to keep from telling, but when his brother, Cal, returns to Mt. Gilead after decades of self-exile, it threatens to come to the surface.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Bright Forever, Lee Martin masterfully conveys, with a voice that is at once distinct and lyrical, one man's struggle to come to terms with the outcome of his life. Powerful and captivating, River of Heavenis about the high cost of living a lie, the chains that bind us to our past, and the obligations we have to those we love.

From the Hardcover edition.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 288 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked River of Heaven? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked River of Heaven. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad
  2. Homework Shares fiction, mystery, literary fiction
  3. A Cat Named Darwin: Embracing the Bond Between Man and Pet
  4. Vanished Shares fiction, mystery, literary fiction

“People who read River of Heaven tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Sing a Song of Tuna Fish: Hard-To-Swallow Stories from Fifth Grade
  2. Snakewoman of Little Egypt
  3. The Douglas Notebooks
  4. Trash, Sex, Magic

“If you want more of the same (literary fiction), start with these.”

  1. The Impossibly
  2. Breathing Out the Ghost
  3. The Family Next Door
  4. Pennies from Burger Heaven

“If it was the mystery that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Awake
  2. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
  3. The Five Gates of Hell
  4. The Unseen World

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Vintage: A Ghost Story
  2. Grayson
  3. The Every Boy
  4. Secret Path