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Published May 2008
307 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
Richard Hill's innocent belief that love between his black father and white mother created him, that he is proof of a good and purposeful God, ends at age eight when a neo-Nazi youth rapes his mother and murders her and his father. Richard survives, a witness to violence and, he believes, his own cowardice. On the strength of Richard's testimony, a white jury convicts Henry Clayton, a teen bearing swastika tattoos, and sentences him to death. His future in ruins, Richard soon perceives that the mix of his parents satisfies neither side.
Sixteen years after the murders, Richard receives a letter from the prosecutor's office. DNA evidence has exonerated Henry Clayton. Richard is the man who remains imprisoned, alone within his discredited nightmare. Henry Clayton soon arrives, dressed in the clothes of a preacher, claiming rebirth, extending his hand not only to return Richard to faith, but to use this faith to find the real killer. Even as Richard begins to take a step in a new direction, his youth and voices from his past reach out to oppose Clayton.
But how can a traumatized memory from so long ago defeat a perfect science? Its frightening insight into the best and worst of men and their institutions, thoughtful intrigue, and superb attack upon preconceptions make River Ghosts a mystery devoid of coincidences or tidy endings, that will grip readers from the stunning opening to its powerful last page.
"Robb depicts Henry's terror campaign and Richard's hunger for justice with steely eloquence." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. The pseudonymous Robb, an attorney, writes with the chilling clarity of Alice Sebold. Read it and weep." - Kirkus Reviews.
"The fulsomeness of fragments and staccato sentences, normally reserved for action sequences, lends the entire work an urgency that matches the main character's need for truth; a need that impels the work along like a gale wind against the back." - Foreword Magazine.
This information about River Ghosts was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robb is the pseudonym of Bruce Steinberg who published his first novel, The Widow's Son, under his own name.
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