A Review of Linda Ulleseit’s Latest Novel

Before reading Linda Ulleseit’s latest novel, “The River Remembers,” I never thought I would find a novel based on early American history that would be so exciting that I would stay up all night reading. I was totally engrossed in this hard-to-put-down story by the third chapter. 

Three communities, white, black, and native, are juxtaposed next to one another, with each facing their own trials and tribulations. Three women take center stage in this enchanting tale. Day Sets belongs to a native tribe, Samantha is a white pioneer, and then there is Harriet, a young slave girl with hopes of a normal life as one owner or another decides her fate.

The story takes the reader to the villages and farms of the natives. Day Sets is the daughter of Cloud Man, an Indian chief who believes in marrying off her daughters to white men in order to give them a better chance in life. She worries about her first encounter with her “teya,” meaning the white wife of her wasichu (white) husband. Glimpses of native culture are presented to the reader in a phantasmagoria of colors.

 A love story brings even greater excitement to this incredible novel. Samantha exemplifies the strong-willed pioneer woman who would not easily bend to the demands of the opposite sex. Caught between two suitors, she must decide between a life of stability and comfort or one of adventure and unpredictability.

Throughout the novel, the Mississippi River plays the role of a medium, and as Ulleseit writes, “Born before memory, the river is the mother of all living things…A millennia of women echoed in the mist, women who had gathered food or washed in the river, women who had cried in passion, pain, or pleasure and added their tears to the river.”

I strongly recommend this novel both as a fact-based account and also as an exciting work of fiction.