Sun, 21 Dec 2014 16:28:33 +0000

Rivers play a key role in Earth, my first novel. Even as a child I thought of the rivers as veins in a hand or arteries connected to our hearts. Here’s an excerpt from the book.

I watched the Current whip by in muddy fury. It was deceptively small, ordinary, but so ornery. It was just a few feet wide and tempted you with its normality. But everyone knew the Current was nothing to be messed with. Every year, a couple of kids died in the Current. We all knew the stories.

In Missouri, there were two rivers that got all the attention, the lugubrious Mississippi, now slimy with oil, and the stout and muddy Missouri. But dozens of other rivers snaked the countryside, sent mucky water like blood up and down the animal veins of the landscape.

I read this and more at a recent fiction reading on Oregon’s Coast, in a bookstore a stone’s throw from the crashing waves of the Pacific. Here’s a video.

http://magis.to/MTdwAkFDC1d6JSoHDmEwCXx9

If you want to know more about my novels, go to www.carolineallen.com.