The Things Downriver

All the fire that drives us, or consumes us, happens by about age 8, and the act of mapping the textures of the ephemeral landscape of childhood is an act of personal myth building, of liberation; an alchemical act. Reading The Things Downriver is to watch an artist individuate before our very eyes taking us along for the ride with the taste of homemade ravioli and two fingers of grappa poured from the goatskin bag. In this era when some would demonize immigrants, here is not only an archeologist of morning digging into her own family's immigration but as a grown woman, now the age of grandmothers, discovering via mapping how becoming a daughter works in USAmerica. The Things Downriver is an act of alchemy with the power to transform its readers. All literature should aim for this, but Denise Calvetti Michaels has accomplished it. -Paul E. Nelson Author of A Time Before Slaughter, American Sentences, American Prophets