THE RIVER PEOPLE

Family history becomes intertwined with the realities of crossing the Oregon Trail in Kellebrew’s historical novel.

In 1852, Marilla Washburn’s family follows the Oregon Trail and experiences its harshness, suffering the loss of Marilla’s brother Henry and enduring cholera along the way. At 15 years of age, Marilla marries John Black, an Irishman who escaped an alcoholic father to sail to Oregon. John and Marilla enjoy a gentle courtship and a happy marriage. Soon, their story becomes intertwined with that of Marilla’s brother Walter, the first of her siblings to be born in Washington territory. He’s a gunslinger, drunkard, and idealist; the author follows him through his marriage to an Indigenous woman named Little Frogs to a stint prospecting for gold in Alaska. Kellebrew’s book is part memoir, part history, and part fiction, blended together in a series of vignettes and scenes that draw the interlinked characters in her family history together. (“I suppose Walter’s bones lie there to this day, one neat bullet hole punched through his skull.”) Interspersed throughout the text are the words of her ancestors Walter Meikle and John Meikle, framing Kellebrew’s exploration of the latter half of the 19th century through the eyes of her own family. Readers will enjoy the lyrical writing style (“We saw the river take him, Henry my brother, my mother’s son, and yank him downstream like an autumn leaf”), though occasionally the flicking from past to present, and between first-person narration and third-person imaginings in the author’s voice, is somewhat jarring. This approach does, however, allow space for Kellebrew to pontificate on the various themes that are woven into the narrative, including Indigenous rights and the ownership of land, homelessness, and the strength exhibited by her forebears in taking these journeys. The whole book is drawn together by the threads of movement and worldbuilding as Kellebrew observes, “In the grand scheme of things, civilization is the anomaly, permanent habitation the aberration.”

A sensitively crafted history of pioneers and immigrants for American history enthusiasts.