Book Review: Downriver by Kelly Garriott Waite

Reviewed by:  The Rev. Leah D. Schade

Available on Amazon for Kindle download, $.99. http://www.amazon.com/Downriver-ebook/dp/B00BL7VFE6


Waite’s e-book is a series of six vignettes that give us brief yet compelling glimpses of life in America moving between rural and suburban landscapes and communities.  I have lived in both places and found myself nodding in recognition of the details in these tiny portraits.  Waite beautifully captures a child’s perspective on a farmer-neighbor’s death, the twang of conversation between two old friends reminiscing, and the humorous family drama of a canoeing trip.  

The opening piece “Fractured” is a taut short story about friendships, farms, communities and cows negatively affected by the shale gas industry.  While the story is realistic fiction not based on actual events, the circumstances of a farmer faced with the decision to lease his land to drilling or face the demise of his farm is all too common in Pennsylvania and Ohio.  The tragic irony is that his decision results in more loss than he, his wife, or his friends could have ever anticipated . . .

Read the rest of the review here:  http://ecowatch.com/2013/downriver-fracking-and-consumerism-eroding-rural-communities/