River Town, a set on Flickr.
Views from the real River Town
(Images from the Kanawha and Elk rivers around Charleston, WV)
One thing I really missed when I lived away from West Virginia was the river. There were lakes close by, and for a while I lived less than 10 minutes from the Pacific Ocean, so it wasn’t like I never saw bodies of water, but there is just something cool about the river, the way it constantly changes and the way lights reflect off of it.
The Kanawha River was the inspiration and basis for the book River Town that just came out this week. The book is set at a time when everything revolved around the river; rivers were the lifeblood of everything west of the Appalachian Mountains and they were the driving force behind the westward expansion of the United States.
River Town isn’t an historical book, it is pure fiction. But with all great period fiction, there’s enough truth and history in it to make it seem very, very real. And who knows…maybe it is.
Other blog posts about River Town