Review - The River, By Moonlight by Camille Marchetta

The River, By Moonlight
Camille Marchetta
Virtualbookworm.com Publishing
ISBN # 978-1602640177

"ON A RAINY APRIL NIGHT in 1917, a passing vagrant sees a young woman fall (or is it jump?) into New York City’s Hudson River. He tries to save her, but fails. The police tentatively identify the woman as Lily Canning, twenty-five years old, from Minuit, a town in the Hudson Valley."


"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach..."
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The River, By Moonlight seems, at first glance, to be a murder mystery. It is not. When Lily dies, her family and friends find themselves entrenched in the mystery of why a vibrant, talented young woman would choose to end it all. We travel with them through their immense grief and confusion, their love and guilt flayed open like an unexpected and gruesome wound.

Camille Marchetta never flinches in this raw, but hopeful story of how people deal with a death they can't possibly understand.
(August 1, 2007, pp 376, $14.95)