The River by Starlight is a tale told in the early 1900s to the mid 1900s. It tells of the hardships of people that lived during that time, dealing with mental illness, whooping cough, financial hardship, farming ups and downs, and marriage between two volatile people.
Analiese Rushton lives in Iowa, but longs to leave and live with her brother, Cal, in Montana. Analiese (Annie) is a divorcee, with a young daughter who lives with Annie's ex-husband and his new wife. Annie regrets that she gave up her daughter, but she was unable to care for the child, as Annie suffered with severe postpartum depression.
When Annie moves to Montana, she meets Adam Fielding. There is an immediate spark between them, but Annie is nervous about her past. Adam courts her and after she tells him of her past trouble, they marry. Adam is extremely jealous of anyone who shows interest in Annie. Their marriage has its ups and downs, and soon comes to a heartbreaking point.
When Annie is sent away, Adam doesn't know what to do, nor how to handle things. Through a series of incidents, including financial troubles, they are farther and farther from each other.
This story tells of the story of Annie and Adam, their heartbreak, their sorrows, their triumphs, and the lives they lived.
The story is loosely based on real people.
It is heartbreaking and hopeful, at the same time. It deals with the issues of mental illness and how they were handled in the beginning of the 20th century.
#TheRiverByStarlight #EllenNotbohm ( )

Every well-wrought sentence in The River by Starlight is as beautiful as the Henry David Thoreau inspired title. Author Ellen Notbohm has penned a breathlessly epic, masterful story set in early 1900’s Montana in language so lyrically elevated you’ll want to commit much of it to memory but will have to get back to it later—you’ll be too busy turning the pages.
The River by Starlight is a starkly humanistic story. It’s an historical novel intimately and engagingly written in present tense concerning the sweeping life story of dark-haired and diminutive Annie Rushton, whose young marriage is permanently marred by what might be the time’s inchoate perceptions of post-partum depression. There are repercussions to Annie’s malady that propel her to leave everything behind in her home state of Iowa and hop a train to join her bachelor brother in the wilds of homesteading Montana, where she risks starting a new life. Shouldering her heartbreak, Annie applies her headstrong, fierce independence to helping her brother prosper, so when charismatic businessman Adam Fielding, a colleague of her brother’s, enters her life, theirs is a relationship forged on mutual ambition, but as the years wear on, they become two desperate souls unwittingly tossed by the unpredictable storms of life. ( )

As the book opens Annie is caring for her dying mother. A mother who never really cared all that much for Annie. But Annie feels she needs to stay ’til her mother passes. She does learn that there had been a time where she could have escaped from her unpleasant living arrangement but her mother kept the opportunity from her – Annie’s brother has a homestead in Montana and he invited her to come live with him. He knows that she needs a place to start over.

Finally, Annie can head to Montana for her new life. She slowly settles into life and is finding a remnant of peace and then her brother drops a bombshell on her. He will sell out his homestead to Annie and his friend, Adam, a man from the town who works in a shop but who comes from farming stock. He and Annie have been flirting around each other, but with this offer they would have to get married. Both have secrets from their past; Annie shares hers but tells Adam she does not need to know his.

They do marry and as well as things go in the beginning is as bad as things go after Annie has a baby for what neither one of them understand is that Annie suffers from post partum psychosis. Because in this time there was no understanding, nor a definition for this condition. As much as Annie longs for a child before one arrives she does not begin to comprehend why she wants to harm the child after it is born.

Adam has his own fears as he saw his mother bury several of his siblings during hard seasons and he knows what it did to her. He does now feel though that he wants to be a father. To take that chance. So these two, with their fears and problems embark on a life together.

This is a rich and complicated tale full of heartache, love and yes, redemption. Annie is a marvelous character. She cannot fathom what overcomes her when she has children and there was no help for women with post partum issues in these days. She was a woman of strong character and a bit ahead of her time but there was nowhere to turn for help. Women who didn’t conform to what men considered appropriate behavior were often put into institutions.

Men were not encouraged to discuss their feelings – particularly in the West where the “cowboy up” attitude is still somewhat prevalent today. So this tale of two damaged individuals trying to make a life together certainly makes for some compelling reading. Life is not easy on a homestead in the West and I’m not going to spoil the detailed plot. Just know that if you pick this book up you will not be able to put it back down until you finish. And it will occupy your thoughts for days after you finish. ( )

Ellen Notbohm’s new book, The River by Starlight, tells the story of a homesteading couple in Montana in the early 1900s struggling with the wife's recurring postpartum depression. The book was inspired by research into Ellen's own family history.

Maternal mental health rarely appears in historical fiction, which makes this book a particularly interesting historical novel. The frontier setting also creates space around the topic to examine it without today’s expectations or pre-conceived ideas about solutions. Just how would a woman and her partner deal with postpartum psychosis, given the general ignorance and social stigma surrounding women’s mental health issues in the early 20th century, not to mention the gender-biased laws of the day?

Notbohm does a good job of telling both Annie and Adam’s stories authentically. Annie is the main player, but Adam’s grief and desperation also ring true. ( )

I received an advanced reader copy of "The River by Starlight" by Ellen Notbohm and I'm so glad I did. My goodness from the first chapter the author weaves a tale of love, tragic loss, heart-breaking details of life, along with a beautifully descriptive writing style that encompasses the story in a way that confides in the reader.

The details of the story are set in the early 1910's to 1940's as it trails the main character, Annie as she receives a letter from her brother Cal, to join him on his homestead in Montana to help care for him and the house. She accepts the offer and after settling in she meets her brother's boss, Adam Fielding. It was certainly not love at first sight, but in time Adam is taken by her strong character and proceeds to court her. Part of the author's charm shines through her descriptions of historical events and through her dialogue between characters. On one encounter with Adam, Annie describes a detail about Adam's horse and finds herself falling privy to his questioning conversation. "I see he's missing something," she says, and kicks herself for falling into yet another prickly conversation with him. Stuck now, like a hair in a biscuit." The author's style of writing had me laughing, rooting for the characters, and crying alongside all of the tragic loss and heartache.

Even with how beautifully written this story was, I was really impressed with the author's prose in writing about mental illness and postpartum depression, showing that it isn't pretty but it's REAL. It not only affects the individual struggling with it, but Ellen Notbohm shows how it affects others around them. Mental illness is still as subject that doesn't seem to get enough attention in today's world, let alone the time period in which this story takes place. I applaud the author for taking those risks and for writing a beautifully and heart-wrenching story that became, "The River of Starlight".

#TheRiverByStarlight #NetGalley ( )