Our story begins in 1988, in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The matriarch of the Rivers family, Eliza, a grandmother and widow, has to contend with her greedy son’s determination to replace her at the helm of the family business… and sell the land she loves. WHERE THE RIVERS MERGE is cleverly titled, denoting both location and strands of one family.
The plantation house of Mayfield has seen time pass. Eliza goes there with two young women to show them their heritage. She tells us of the friendship between two girls, a relationship destined to fail. Prior to the Great War, Rawlins and Sloane Rivers lived at Mayfield with their sons Heyward and Lesesne, and middle child Eliza. The girl was a tomboy, who loved horses, and she quickly made a friend of the manager’s daughter, Covey. Not alone the class divide but racial difference was doomed to pull them apart, but for years they were the best of pals, sharing a tutor and riding horses. Then Eliza is sent to Charleston to attend school, and she tries to bring Covey as house staff so she can continue attending school. But that’s not going to last long, as unpleasant people talk.
Protecting her family legacy and the land which her son Arthur wants to sell for redevelopment, the modern Eliza arranges a conservation easement on some tracts of land. By recounting her early days at Mayfield, she demonstrates why the rice fields, marsh birds and local breed of horses mean so much to her. The future will lie with Norah Davis and Savannah Rivers, the two young women who follow her from Charleston. But first, Eliza has to get to know them.
I love the local Marsh Tacky horses which were developed to do farm and riding work. They were raced to prove they had speed as well as strength. Eliza’s childhood and coming of age contain joys and tragedies, scorn and affection. WHERE THE RIVERS MERGE by Mary Alice Monroe will reward anyone looking for an immersive read set in a slower time, with historical pivots like the Great War, racial laws and the Depression. We see the constraints under which women lived, controlled by parents including approving marriage, voteless and, if wealthy, not expected to work nor credited if they did. This is the first of a duology. I notice duologies are in fashion right now, perhaps because some readers didn’t buy the middle book of a trilogy. Last year I enjoyed On Ocean Boulevard, in a popular series called The Beach House, by Mary Alice Monroe. A similar theme of time passing, women holding firm, and the protection of nature runs through both sets of books.
From New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe comes her highly anticipated Where the Rivers Merge, the first of two epic and triumphant novels celebrating one intrepid woman\'s life across multiple generations in the American South.
1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. A free spirit, she refuses to be confined by societal norms and spends her days exploring the vast property, observing wildlife, and riding horses. But the Great War, coastal storms, and family turmoil bring unexpected challenges to Eliza, putting her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era.
1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She’s fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family—or watch them both be split apart.
Set against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century Lowcountry, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change in order to protect her family legacy and the land she loves.
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