cover image THE RIVER HOME: A Memoir

THE RIVER HOME: A Memoir

Dorothy Weil, . . Ohio Univ., $24.95 (261pp) ISBN 978-0-8214-1405-7

In a voice as unadorned as a Midwestern plain, Weil, a "river rat" and documentary film producer, cumulatively builds a richly textured family history from 1894 to 1988. She chronicles the lives of two ordinary people: her father, a steamboat captain and mate, and her mother, a housewife. Although the memories are Weil's, this is her parents' story, and that steady focus sets this book apart from many self-absorbed memoirs. "Parents," Weil writes, "had lives before we were born, names we never knew them by, dreams we weren't in—stories that began long before our own." When Mom was a schoolgirl in Cincinnati, classes were taught in German as well as English; when Dad began working on packet boats running between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, a mate had to read "a boat's moods," and not depend on radar. Dad had a "lurid" reputation; Mom "kept up with all the middle-class standards that she could." This intimate account of family life, deftly sprinkled with Americana (the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Depression, Pearl Harbor, Orphan Annie, Edgar Guest, Shirley Temple), constitutes an engaging sociocultural history of mid-America working-class life in the 20th century. Although Weil recalls her teenage shame—"I didn't want anyone to know... that I'd been poor... had no hometown, no house with trees, no Dad at work and Mom at home in a nice crisp apron"—she has obviously come to terms with being a "river rat." Weil's hometowns are the Delta Queen, the Valley Queen and the Island Queen, and she immerses even the landlocked reader into this world. Illus. (Apr.)

Forecast:The university press imprint could scare some readers away, but Weil's book is for the general reader, not the specialist. It should sell well in St. Louis, Memphis and other Mississippi River towns.