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  • Meet Me at the River by Nina de Gramont
  • Karen Coats
de Gramont, Nina. Meet Me at the River. Atheneum, 2013. 376p. ISBN 978-1-4169-8014-8 $17.99 R Gr. 9-12.

Tressa and Luke were in love since childhood, planning to spend the rest of their lives together despite the fact that Tressa’s mother, Hannah, was married to Luke’s father, and Luke and Tressa shared half-siblings. When Luke drowns, Tressa can’t bear the pain and attempts suicide. Though she is saved, her grief lingers, salved only by trysts with the shade of Luke, who finds himself able to visit and sometimes even touch Tressa. Chapters alternate between Luke’s recollections and Tressa’s present as Tressa fights to keep Luke in her life while everyone tells her she has to move on. Echoes of Wuthering Heights infuse this tale (Tressa’s grandparents are even named Earnshaw), which is richly steeped in a Colorado landscape as wild and enticing as Catherine and Heathcliff’s moors. Unlike that classic romance, however, this one is ultimately committed to Tressa’s emotional healing. The book tackles the thorny issue of suicide from multiple angles, from Tressa’s becoming friends with siblings whose father killed himself to an English project on Sylvia Plath, Assia Wevill, and Ted Hughes. The complex portrait of Hannah, a woman who refuses to live without her own idea of romance and freedom no matter what the cost to those who love her, pulls a subtle thread of both understanding and judgment through Tressa’s actions. An unfortunate accumulation of final thoughts and perspectives mars the power of the ending, but readers will find emotional and psychological truth in Tressa’s struggle to let go without forgetting. [End Page 262]

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