An essayistic memoir about the part of rural Indiana where the author grew up, and her high school sweetheart who is now in prison for a double murder.
Riverine is an incredibly personal and eloquent book. Circling buried truths and confronting ghosts, this is a book that wrestles with issues of nature and nurture ... Palm’s memoir is lifeline and letter to the parallel universes we so often wish for.
The juxtaposition of Palm’s fascination with landscapes and her coming of age as an author works nicely. Both strands of the story cross-pollinate ... Reading this tale, we can all remember lost loves and ponder the might-have-beens.
...beautifully examines the myriad ways nature and nurture mingle and mix to make us who were are as adults ... Her own story is, at its heart, one of a girl from the country growing up and moving away, though at times the book flirts with a kind of advocacy journalism ... Yet despite Ms. Palm’s broad sympathies, we never get a sense of why Corey committed the murders ... The result is that rarest of things: a book that lays bare the lives that are lived and not lived.
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