The River Widow by Ann Howard Creel: book review

The River Widow (2018) is set in Ohio, America, in 1937 during the Great Depression.

Adah Branch is married to Lester, with a four-year-old stepdaughter Daisy.

Adah accidentally kills her husband Lester. As she disposes his body in the river, she is almost swept away, and fights to save herself from drowning.

Lester’s older brother Jesse, and their father Buck, are exceptionally mean, and they know something isn’t truthful about Adah’s story, right from the start.

Her husband’s family fight to take the land, the house, and even Daisy from her. Adah fights against a murder accusation and Lester’s family who want a brutal revenge.

There aren’t any people on Adah’s side in this backwater village where trust is hard to gain. But one man eventually comes to her aid.

This is a simplistic story, on all accounts, told in a way that a five-year-old can read. On virtually every page is a series of annoying questions. ‘How much did Drucker know? … Was that one of Esther’s purposes, to get Adah to talk? … Why was she hesitating? …’

There’s not enough tension, for me, to make this a gripping novel.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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