Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward After Loss and Heartache

Country music artist Smith debuts with a sensitive and moving recollection of his path through grief recovery after his three-year-old son, River, accidentally drowned in 2019. Beginning with a paralyzing account of finding River facedown in a pool, Smith details the “slideshow” of grief that repeated on loop in his brain in the days afterward: River “purple and limp like a rag doll,” and, later, “in the hospital with breathing tubes in his nose”; Smith’s other son, then–five-year old Lincoln, placing his fingers on River’s casket at the funeral. Smith went through the motions at concerts and sought relief in self-help books and his weed pen, until a moment months later when, listening to devotionals in his car, he was “blown away” by a sudden awareness of God’s unconditional love: “I knew of God before, but now I understood something far greater... he knew me.” Smith explains how he abandoned a false sense of control and placed his trust in Jesus, and found a measure of purpose within the pain by using trauma as fuel to spread God’s message. He also offers readers strategies to navigate their own grief, such as surrounding themselves with like-minded believers. In stark, intimate prose, the author candidly renders the realities of suffering while articulating a moving message of renewal. Those seeking a faith-based path through grief will find this instructive and affecting. (Aug.)