ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my good friends Andrew Kelly and Steven Woods for their feedback and encouragement through the early stages of this manuscript. Thanks to Kendall Dunkelberg and Bridget Smith Pieschel for supporting me in the neighborhood. The Mississippi Arts Commission and Alabama Arts Council have been instrumental in supporting my artistic endeavors and I am very grateful to both organizations. Thanks to Nicki Kennedy, Sam Edenborough, and everyone at the Intercontinental Literary Agency for their enthusiasm, and to Stefanie Broesigke at Heyne Publishing for getting on board so early. I’d like to say thank you to Matthew Snyder at Creative Artists Agency for his vision and hard work. Thanks to Edward Graham of the Steinberg Agency, whose sharp eye was instrumental in the revision stages. Peter Steinberg, my literary agent, possesses creative vision and the ability to inspire, among many other immeasurable qualities. Thanks, Peter. I want to thank Sarah Knight, my editor at Simon & Schuster, who helped drive this manuscript to its highest level, and then held it up proudly for all to see. Thanks also to Molly Lindley, Michael Accordino, and the team at Simon & Schuster. To my blue-eyed Mississippi girls, thank you for every day. And, finally, my gracious thank you to Sabrea, who has come to my rescue more times than I can count.
Simon & Schuster
Reading Group Guide
Rivers
MICHAEL FARRIS SMITH
Introduction
Devastating storms have pummeled the already eroded coastline of the American Southeast and the federal government has drawn a boundary, known as the Line, declaring everything below it uninhabitable. This is the setting for Rivers, a land of lawlessness and desperation, where no one has electricity or resources and no one and nothing is safe from looters, vandals, and violent storms that surge without warning, destroying everything in their path.
Having lost his wife and unborn child during a mandatory evacuation, Cohen has decided to stay behind, rebuilding his house over and over again as an altar to his deceased family. On his way back from buying supplies one day, Cohen picks up two teenage hitchhikers, a boy and a Creole girl, who attack and nearly kill him, stealing his Jeep, all his supplies, and the last precious mementos he had of his wife and child. His will to survive becomes bound to finding and punishing his attackers, who are themselves prisoners in a commune run by a nefarious preacher with dangerous and twisted plans. He is now faced with the decision to escape the treacherous and sordid existence of life below the Line, including the Creole girl—who he finds himself drawn to—or to try to help them all escape the horrible future that awaits.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. The preface for the novel is a verse from the Bible: “When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.” Acts 27:20. What tone does this set for the opening of the first chapter? Is this tone sustained throughout the novel? If so, how?
2. How is religion dealt with in the novel? Do you see Cohen as a religious person? Mariposa? Aggie? What does the author’s treatment of religion suggest about his own views?
3. The novel offers the close third-person perspectives of a number of different characters. How do you think this contributes to the overall story? Are there some perspectives that you relate to or trust more than others?
4. How do you think the author’s style of prose affects the story? What are the distinctive features of his prose?
5. Aside from Cohen, we learn very little about the characters appearances and lives outside of the present moment. How do you think this absence of detail affects the way in which readers relate to the characters?
6. How does Smith instill a sense of darkness and fear in the novel? Are there particular passages that stand out as especially apocalyptic? What aspects of life below the Line stand out as the most disturbing to you?
7. In Chapter 8, Cohen leaves a note at his ransacked house that reads: “To whom it may concern—he is not dead he is risen.” What do you think he meant by this? What does it help us learn about the characters’ relationship to religion?
8. The weather plays a significant role in the novel, from its part in the characters’ current circumstances to the continued effect it has on their lives. What attitudes are conveyed by the author’s portrayal of the storms and our defenselessness against them?
9. Do good and evil exist in Smith’s world? Is Aggie good or evil? What about the other characters?
10. What were Aggie’s plans for the commune? What kind of person do you think Aggie was before the storms and flooding?
11. Many dystopian novels portray a nightmarish world that turns ordinary humans into murderers and thieves. Could you imagine a world like this? How do you think you would react if you had to endure such circumstances?
12. Mariposa and Evan are introduced as thieves and murderers, but by the end of the book they have transformed. What do you think is their true character? What did meeting Cohen have to do with their transformation? What do you suspect would have become of them had they not met him?
13. What circumstances made it possible for a relationship to form between Cohen and Mariposa? What makes their relationship so poignant? What purpose did their relationship serve, both for the novel and for each of them independently?
14. The novel revolves around each characters’ struggle to survive in spite of the horrifying conditions they must endure. What have Cohen and Mariposa gained by the end of the book? What have they lost?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Smith is a native of Mississippi and was clearly very affected by the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on the Southeastern American coast. How closely did the storms described in Rivers and the government’s treatment of certain areas reflect the actual devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina?
2. Hurricanes continue to strike all over the world, slowly eroding the coastline with their powerful force. Do some research into meteorological predictions to find out how much of the coastline is under threat of hurricane destruction—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a good place to start.
3. The commune formed by Aggie was seen as sinister by all but Ava, yet he was still able to hold them all captive and, in some sense, maintain their allegiance. Learn more about well-known cults of the past and the specific characteristics of a cult and its leader: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult. Can you see some of these traits in Aggie?
4. Have a dystopian movie night! Watch classics, like Fahrenheit 451 and Clockwork Orange, or modern adaptations like The Road and Blindness. Read the books first, if you like. Discuss how they compare to Rivers.
Read more from Michael Farris Smith with his latest Parisian-set e-novella
The Hands of Strangers
What happens to a marriage when a child vanishes?
Jon and Estelle walk the picturesque Paris streets, but are living through the cruelest of realties—the disappearance of their nine-year-old daughter Jennifer, abducted from the Musée D’Orsay during a class field trip.
Jon spends his day slugging through bus terminals and metro halls, posting flyers of his daughter, while Estelle has become a recluse, unwilling to leave the apartment in case the telephone rings. Their relationship suffers as the passing time chips away at the hope of Jennifer’s return.
Then, a free-spirited artist enters their life as unexpectedly as Jennifer has left it, luring Jon down a reckless path as he searches desperately for courage in the smallest signs. If their daughter is ever returned to them, will Jon and Estelle both be there to welcome her home?
1
When it comes you will know it, when it comes you will know it, Jon repeated to himself. It came and went and he didn’t know it until two stops past. He had counted before he got on the metro. Eight stops. And he counted because he wasn’t able to see the signs on the wall in the metro halls, the bodies crammed together, a mob of Parisian heads surrounding him and crowding the door in the evening’s busiest hour. So he counte
d and stood in the middle and subtracted one at each stop. He had three to go and that’s when he began repeating When it comes you will know it. And then he started thinking about Estelle at home in the apartment, sitting next to the telephone, organizing their flyer campaign for high-traffic street corners and bus stops and metro lines, and now he realizes he’s two stops past.
“Goddammit,” he mumbles, and a man holding a bag of groceries looks at him blankly.
The plan was for Jon to be in prime position to hand out the flyers in the Gare du Nord metro station before the six o’clock crowd, but he stopped for a drink that became three. He knows Estelle won’t know. She won’t leave that phone in case the police call and she trusts him to do this right but he had to have a drink. He can’t help but have a drink before he goes into the metro with a stack of orange flyers that have a picture of his nine-year-old daughter in the middle, surrounded with AIDEZ-NOUS À RETROUVER JENNIFER written in bold black letters. He simply can’t help it.
The metro stops and he bumps out of the door with a pack of others. He moves with the crowd along the passageways of the rue Montmartre stop. It takes going up and down stairs and through a rounded hallway to get to the other side of the tracks. People are everywhere and in a steady shuffle, ready to get home, put up their feet, have their dinner, read their paper. The train arrives and this time he concentrates, gets on late so he can stand near the door, see out of the window. Back two stops to Gare du Nord, where five metro lines and half of Paris collide and there is every kind of face—old, pretty, tired, laughing, cynical, white, brown, round, thin, childish, hollow. No matches for Jennifer. No little girl with thin, wavy hair and green eyes, wearing jeans and a pink backpack and her heavy coat. Two months and nothing. Two months of her dancing in his head in this outfit. He stops at the foot of the escalator, where people cluster in an impatient pack, and passes out the orange flyers. Some take, some ignore. The ones that take fold and stuff it without looking, maybe will find it later when they reach into their pockets or purses as they pay for bread on the walk home, will say to themselves, Where did this come from? And he wonders the same. This day, this moment, this getting here, this standing at the escalator. Where did this come from? This slow, slow ticking of the clock. The crowd thins as the time between trains expands, and out of a stack of two hundred flyers, he keeps five to post on the exits that lead up into the streets.
He gets onto the escalator and the woman on the step in front of him sees what he’s holding and says, “I have seen this. On the news. You haven’t found her yet?”
Jon shakes his head and says, “Not yet.”
“You should go on television again,” she says and turns away. He feels confident that if universal law allowed it, he could put his hands around her neck and choke her until her mouth was dry.
The walkways’ and intersections’ exits and entrances are organized chaos and he is nearly knocked down over and over working his way through the traffic. When he’s done sticking up the last one, he looks at his watch and times for thirty seconds, then counts how many people look at their flyer.
Two. Which is up one from last week when he posted at the Gare de l’Est.
He gets on the metro and heads back home. At the café at the end of his street Monsieur Conrer serves him another drink, and when he goes into the apartment Estelle is perched on a stool next to the phone in the kitchen, cigarette in one hand and red marker in the other. She looks up, smokes, then says, “How’d it go?”
They have stopped sleeping in the same room because they don’t sleep. Estelle takes the couch and Jon lies in the bedroom. He hears her all hours of the night—pacing, opening the refrigerator door, changing channels. Jon tries to trick himself into sleeping by imagining they’re on a long vacation and Jennifer is left behind with friends. Sometimes Estelle will come into the bedroom and crawl over close to him, rest her head on his chest, curl herself into a ball. She is a combination of smells—of perfume, of cigarettes, of coffee. But she doesn’t ever stay curled next to him for long.
On empty afternoons, when alone in the apartment, each of them has tried to go into Jennifer’s room and make her bed, put her shoes away in the closet, close the teen fashion magazine lying open on her nightstand. Jon had laughed when she held it out to him in the bookstore and said she needed it. “Need? Nine is a single-digit number. That information is for girls with double-digit birthdays.” She looked down at it, ran her hand across the glossy cover, as if she could feel herself in the perfect face staring back at her. “Let’s just pretend I’m twelve,” she said. He took it and made her promise not to tell her mother. Which she did the moment they walked into the apartment. Later that night, with Jennifer asleep between them on the couch, Estelle had reached over and playfully smacked the back of Jon’s head and said, “Don’t rush her.”
So they go into the room, but tiptoe around the way it is. Careful not to disrupt her life. They keep the door half open, giving themselves a glimpse of the life that was as they walk down the hallway.
Even life upside down has its routine. Estelle stays at home on high alert but Jon has to go to work because the earth keeps spinning. So he shows up at L’École des Langues at nine a.m. every weekday morning, goes to his desk, assorts his tasks for the day, and then the knocks and bumps of an office distract him until he walks back into the street in the evening. His coworkers can’t figure out how to treat him. Too normal and they risk apathy. Too sympathetic and they become patronizing. What he gets are overly cautious smiles when he’s handed a fax or offered a smoke or asked about something he should have done already. Hidden sympathy in tiny gestures that he appreciates but he would rather them kick a hole in the side of his desk and scream, “What the fuck is the world coming to!”
This is the story they were told—Jennifer’s class went to the Musée d’Orsay with their teacher and a volunteer parent. A typical field trip in a typical Paris day. She was there as they sat in a circle in front of a van Gogh. She was there as they sat in a circle in front of a Cézanne. She was there when they ate their sack lunches in the courtyard. She was not there when they counted heads to walk to the bus stop to go back to school. She was not there as the teacher retraced their footsteps. She was not in the bathroom. She was not in the gift shop. She was not in the snack area buying a chocolate bar, which she had a tendency to do on field trips. She was not anywhere.
Their flyer campaign is in full swing and twice a week after work Jon goes through the same routine he went through at the Gare du Nord. They change colors from orange to yellow. Estelle thinks they are easier to read in passing. They try a larger-size paper. They move the telephone numbers of the apartment and of the detective from the bottom to the top.
After doing his duty at the Place d’Italie metro station, Jon stops at Monsieur Conrer’s café next door to their apartment building. It’s winter and dark at 6:30, the lights from the shops glowing yellow in the early night. He knows Estelle is waiting but he can’t go up, not yet ready to hide his despair. Monsieur Conrer has a glass of whiskey waiting for him as he comes in.
“Where today?” he says as Jon sits down at the bar.
“Place d’Italie.”
“A good spot. Something will happen,” he says. His hair is thin and silver and his shoulders slump. He has his own children and grandchildren and he has cried for Jennifer. It happened a week after she disappeared. Jon talked Estelle out of the apartment on a Saturday afternoon and they came and sat here at the table by the window. They shared a carafe of wine and Jon got up to go to the bathroom. When he came back, M. Conrer was sitting with Estelle, they held hands across the table, and they both cried quietly. Jon stepped back into the bathroom and watched through the cracked door until they were finished. Ever since, this is one of the few places she will go. M. Conrer tells Jon every day, “You are one day closer to having Jennifer home.” Jon drinks the first whiskey and asks for another.
“Estelle came in for lunch today,” M. Conrer says.
This time, when the old man tells him you’re one day closer, Jon says, “The chances are dying by the minute. I’ve read the books.”
“Don’t think like that.”
“That’s the least of what I think. If you could see what I think, you’d throw up on your shoes.”
“Don’t think that either,” he says.
But Jon has. And does. Is there only one? Or two or four, or do they rotate, charge a fee, bring them down a thin alley, into a short door, sell her off in ten-minute intervals. Are there women too? He doesn’t want to think these thoughts and he fights them when they arrive but they are as real as his hands and feet. When he prays, he prays that she can at least be given a civil abduction. M. Conrer reaches over with the bottle and makes it a double. Then the bell on the door jingles and Estelle walks in and takes a stool beside Jon.
“Detective Marceau called and said he has seen the flyers and that we’re doing a good job,” she says and this has given her a satisfaction, a hope that he notices in her eyebrows.
“Good. Did he say anything else?”
“Only that they’re working hard. And that maybe we should up the reward.” She takes a cigarette from M. Conrer’s pack. “Was Place d’Italie a very busy spot?”
No, it wasn’t.
“Yeah, pretty busy,” he answers.
“Can we go up to thirty thousand?”
They started at fifteen. After a month they went to twenty. “Whatever we need to do,” Jon says and makes the mistake of sighing.
“That didn’t sound very convincing.”
“I said whatever we need to do.”
“It’s the way you said it.”
Rivers Page 32