River of Love by Aimee Medina Carr (Homebound Publication)

Aimee Medina Carr’s debut novel River of Love follows the lives of indigenous young people in the 1960s and 1970s as they try to live in the Red Canon area of Colorado along the Arkansas River in a region that is dominated by powerful white people. She references and draws on thinkers and writers as diverse as St. Augustine, Rainer Maria Rilke, Eric Clapton, and dozens more, and it seems to me that this is a book that only could be written by someone who has read broadly and brings the associations of a lifetime with her. It is a far reaching book that looks to the experiences of a small group of kids but uses them to talk about our shared experience. What drew me in the most, however, was how Carr was able to use the experience of love for individuals, the natural world, and humanity to give us a path forward through those times and experiences that threaten to destroy us.
There is a level of nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s that a lot of people have for that time. It is placed there, of course, by those who were young then, but I think anyone can identify with it, and so many of us have experienced a period in our lives when we were idealistic and everything seemed possible. Carr makes the point that these are not false memories. We might grow into cynicism, but it is the cynicism that is naive, not the hope. Her characters find a place of natural beauty and revitalization where they can find a space outside the confines of the social world along the Arkansas River, and through this repeated setting, she is able to make an argument as to how the natural world can bring out honesty and directness. It is the way to find love and a place where falseness is stripped away, especially the falseness associated with social convention. This is my favorite aspect of this tremendous novel, and I found myself lingering over these passages that brought me back to hope as a way forward.
The point of the novel, if a novel can be said to have a point, is the exceptional power and need for love. It can be summed up emotionally for me in one paragraph:

Love is the beginning, Love is the middle, and Love is the end, we will be judged only by how much we Loved in our lifetimes. Love gives life its meaning. Life gives us this one chance to Love (292).

Love here and in many parts of the novel is personified or maybe it takes on a god-like role, and that is one of the messages of it. Love is a powerful entity capable of changing us. It is perhaps the only thing that can change us for the better so Carr spends a good deal of time examining the different aspects of love and how they can be played out.
River of Love is not a novel to be rushed. I am a fairly fast reader, and I found myself needing to slow down to allow the emotion of the novel to work through me. I went back over lines and scenes to internalize what she was saying. I love what she is saying, and I agree with it. Nostalgia can be a force for stagnation, but that’s not what this is. She is looking back at a time that was meaningful to give us a way forward.

John Brantingham 18th February 2021