What the River KeptWhat the River Kept

For readers who like a family secret that takes eighty years to surface.

What is inside

A novel in three timelines, told without a single flashback marker
A family tree that is wrong on purpose, and corrected by the end
Notes on the real reservoir programmes the book draws from
A reading group guide of eleven questions, one per household

A story about what silence costs

Families are held together as much by what is not said as by what is. The trouble is that the unsaid thing does not stay the same size. It grows to fit the room you give it.

This is a novel about the price of that arrangement, paid across three generations by the people who did not choose it.

What readers say

I finished it and immediately went back to the first chapter, which reads completely differently once you know.
Carla M., book club of eleven years

Our book club spent an hour on whether Estella should have asked at all. Nobody changed their mind.
Ade F., Manchester

Three timelines and I was never once lost. I do not know how that is done.
Rowan S., read it twice

Order What the River Kept

$21.50

Hardback, 352 pages
The reading group guide
An author's note on the real valleys

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Read it risk free

Thirty days to change your mind. Write to us and we will refund the book, no questions asked.

Elena Ruiz Marchetti

Elena Ruiz Marchetti writes novels about families and the places they are moved from. She spent nine years as an archivist before publishing her first book, which explains a great deal about her plots.

What the River Kept is her third novel. She lives inland, which she says is a coincidence.