The Voice of the River

Seventeen-year-old Kai Dionne and his dog, Talia, have fallen into a river near their home in rural Montana, through the surface ice into "an open mouth full of black water." This meditative novel unfolds over a single day while Kai and Talia remain missing. Thon (In This Light) moves delicately through the consciousness of those loosely and intimately connected with Kai, including: his mother Lela, his grandfather Theo, his paralyzed cousin Tulanie, deeply depressed neighbor Oleta Esteban (who has lost three children of her own), and a group of adolescent runaways who live in the surrounding wilderness. Her painstakingly wrought sentences coalesce into a well-observed picture of the vagaries of family relationships, with the requisite undercurrents of loss, regret, and forgiveness. However, Thon's intricate language comes at the expense of plot and momentum, and the reader's interest in discovering Kai's fate becomes lost in a free-fall of words. (Sept.)