Review: Long Bright River
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Liz Moore's Long Bright River is a devastating examination of the impact of addiction on families and society, and also an indictment of how power can corrupt a police force. Set in Philadelphia, the novel follows police officer Michaela "Mickey" Fitzpatrick in her search to find her sister while a predator begins a series of murders in a neighborhood filled with the city's "untouchables"- addicts and prostitutes. While Michaela followed a path to the criminal justice system, Kacey Marie Fitzpatrick has been sliding deeper into addiction and prostitution since she first overdosed as a teen. Mickey's history has its own sorrows, and its one joy in her son, Thomas. Mickey and Kacey's grandmother Gee has seen all this before and is done with Kacey and disdainful of Mickey's distance. So when a killer is stalking the backstreets and alleys of the Kensington district, Mickey is pretty much on her own in trying to figure out why her sister has been missing for almost two months. She is terrified that her sister will have become the area's latest statistic. One of her only confidantes is her partner Truman, who is on leave to recover from knee surgeries. Mickey carries guilt about that situation, as well. Truman has been telling Mickey for some time now that she needs to be smarter about her work situation and about her ex, Thomas's father, who is also a police officer in another precinct. In a story that unfurls in both past and present times, the reader is drawn into Mickey's crushing world.
Long Bright River takes its title from a line in Tennyson's "The Lotos-Eaters," which in turn derives from the lotus-eaters of Greek mythology, who eat the lotus fruit to enter of state of peaceful apathy. That drugged state is not unlike that of opioid addicts. This is a book I think just about every adult should read if they want to feel some of the crushing emotions faced by family members of addicts. At one point Mickey reflects on the fact that with her sister's first overdose she learned that addicts don't want to be saved; they want to keep "sleeping." Will the process of having saved her sister again and again ever spell change for Kacey?
A powerful novel.
I received a Digital Review Copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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