Once Upon a River

I first heard about Bonnie Jo Campbell’s “Once Upon a River” from Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, who put it on his best of 2011 list. And now I know why. I was thoroughly absorbed by this novel set in the early 1980s about a 16-year-old girl who, after her mother splits and her father’s violent death, takes to the river of her rural Michigan town in a rowboat to try and find her mom and in the process begins to forge a new life.

Rural, impoverished river life is not exactly the safest place for a pretty girl, and she happens upon some unsavory characters along the way. Luckily Margo Crane is no ordinary girl; she’s quite the survivalist, who can shoot like a sharpshooter (Annie Oakley is her hero), skin and cook wild game and fish, and sleep for weeks in the great outdoors. She’s a throwback, who prefers being in the natural world on the river with her gun and a dog to school or what other kids are into it.

It’s a rough existence though, and impending hardships and violence seem to lurk around each bend. You might slightly think of the river adventures of Huck Finn crossed with those of “Deliverance” perhaps. But Margo Crane also reminds me of one of those great female characters like the tomboyish Scout in “To Kill a Mocking Bird.” She’s that good and able.

Best of all, is author Bonnie Jo Campbell’s writing, which so seamlessly conjures the natural world of the area and sucks one into the story before you know it. It flows so naturally like the river, and I was turning pages pretty lickety-split to find out what happens to Margo. Will she find peace and a home on the river? Will she go back to her mother? Will she find a way to live that she so desires? These are some of the quandaries that are partly resolved at the end.

“Once Upon a River” is a pretty hypnotic read. It might not be for everyone due to some violence or its backwoods environment and cast, where hunting and skinning wild game is a means to get by, but I would have to say it’s my favorite read so far in 2012. Bonnie Jo Campbell is a writer to watch; she’s already been a National Book Award finalist with her short story collection “American Salvage,” which I intend to read in the future, or anything else she happens to write next.