Bonnie Jo Campbell is a familiar name to many readers of literary fiction; her last book of short stories, American Salvage, was a National Book Award finalist. Once Upon a River is a superb addition to her body of work.
The central character of Once Upon a River is Margo, a 16-year-old raw beauty who possesses a gift with a rifle and a fierce admiration for Annie Oakley. It's the 1970s, and Margo is motherless; early in the novel she also loses her father in a violent confrontation. Taking to the fictional Stark River, in rural Michigan, with only minimal supplies but a powerful sense of survival, Margo moves along the water in her grandfather's boat, searching for a place to call home and for people to call family. Her journey involves considerable physical hardship and challenges in subsistence, and her travels introduce her to an assortment of male characters, allowing for companionship, sexual exploration and, ultimately, critical decisions regarding self-preservation.
Campbell's skill in shaping her main character is one of the greatest strengths of this novel. She writes with a highly original voice, yet also with a sense of subtlety; Margo is an unusual teen protagonist. Campbell's descriptions of the moving water and the related landscape are nicely rendered in this novel and illuminate its homage to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Margo's odyssey along the river is life-defining, and lucky readers will travel with her to the water's end. --Roni K. Devlin, owner of Literary Life Bookstore & More