River Cross My Heart - Softcover

Clarke, Breena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752838199 ISBN 13: 9780752838199

Publisher: Orion Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

Set in the Georgetown neighbourhood of Washington in the 1920s, this is the story of young black girl Johnnie Mae Bynum, entrusted with the care of her younger sister Clara when at the river. Johnnie Mae's attention wanders and her sister drowns. Johnnie Mae must come to terms with her place in the world.

About this title

Review

Oprah Book ClubŪ Selection, October 1999: Breena Clarke's first novel takes place in Georgetown in 1925, where a large and close-knit African American community took shape beneath the shadow of segregation. At the center of the story is baby Clara, who is swallowed by the Potomac as her sister, Johnnie Mae, cools off in the brackish water. It's the only place the girls can find relief--they're banned from the new, clean swimming pool the white kids use.

After Clara drowns, the river is never the same, and Johnnie Mae hovers on the edge of womanhood wondering if she'll be able to get past her guilt and emptiness. In an eloquent passage, Clarke writes, "Losing a loved one, a family member, is like losing a tooth. After a while, those teeth remaining shift and lean and spread out to split the distance between themselves and the other teeth still left, trying to close up spaces."

Bits of wisdom like this are the book's charm. Most remarkable are the church scenes, which Clarke renders almost purely in the give-and-take of voices: the booming preacher's sermon ("The people we love, we only borrowing them"), and the congregation's "Praise Jesus, Amen" exclamations. The author based her novel on stories passed down in Georgetown--tales of that area's first black churches, founded when people decided they wanted their own place of worship, and implicitly their own God. In church the novel takes flight. Elsewhere River, Cross My Heart suffers from clumsy, purple prose, and a plot that moves forward in labored fits and starts. Clarke painstakingly tries to re-create this past world, but sometimes it seems her duty to history is holding her back, bogging her down in period-piece details. In the effortless church scenes, history loses its gravity and is absorbed by grace. --Emily White

About the Author

Breena Clarke grew up in Washington, D.C., and was educated at Webster College and Howard University. Her writings have appeared in the anthologies Contemporary Plays by Women of Color and Street Lights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience. She currently administers the Editorial Diversity Program at Time, Inc., in New York City. She lives in New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0752838199
• ISBN 13: 9780752838199
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245