It's easy to see from the very first pages of If Not for This that something will go awry. That may be the greatest testament to Pete Fromm's moving novel about a couple of rafting guides who battle rapids both literal and metaphorical. Though an early and devastating diagnosis means the course will not run smoothly for the protagonists, Fromm (As Cool As I Am; How This All Started) weaves a narrative that is compelling enough to bind readers to these characters almost as closely as they're bound to one another.
If Not for This is, at its core, a story about gravity, about the ways in which the physical world tries to thwart these characters' spirits and bodies. When we meet Maddy and Dalt, young and fearless, they make their living navigating rivers. We see them through a whirlwind courtship, a wedding, and then an illness that looks like mono but acts like something more sinister. When Maddy finds out that she's pregnant and suffering from multiple sclerosis, the reader's stomach drops like a tourist on a Class V rapid.
What might be an overwhelming story finds unexpected levity in Maddy's voice, a spitfire narrator who's unafraid to intersperse reflections on her illness with memories of her moonlight trysts with Dalt. This is a tough read, but a worthy one; it asks unnerving questions about mortality and resilience, and answers them with the example of one couple's devotion. Maddy and Dalt call themselves "The Luckies," and despite everything, Fromm proves that they're not wrong. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer and bookseller at Flyleaf Books