Excerpt from The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I laugh. Promise Shawn I'll return the maul I'd borrowed from him. The weekend before, I finally finished splitting and stacking that half cord of wood that had been delivered a few months ago. "Yeah, good," he says, instead of "no rush" or "not a problem." Some guys are so possessive of their tools. Linda's outgoing, but Shawn always seems standoffish. Suspicious, almost. Toward me, anyway. He's a recently retired state cop. That probably explains it. I have the feeling that "Make America Great Again" sign on their lawn last year was his idea, not hers.

"How are my two little sweetie pies?" Linda asks.

"You mean double trouble? They got ahold of some crayons yesterday and scrawled all over the kitchen floor. When I busted them and asked, 'Did you two do this?' Maisie looked at her brother and he shook his head, so she did, too. The little monsters were still holding on to their Crayolas."

"Gonna be artists like their daddy," she says, laughing.

"Or politicians," I say. "They've already got the fibbing thing down."

Linda concurs. "When he was three, our Russell took a Magic Marker to our brand-new duvet. Swore up and down that he didn't do it—that it must have been his sister, Jill, who hadn't even started to creep yet. He almost didn't live to see age four." I roll my eyes and laugh. Ask her how Russell likes living out in Colorado. "Fine," she says. "He's been taking classes and bartending part-time but he just got a 'real' job at a TV station in Fort Collins."

I tell her to say hi from Emily and me next time she speaks to him. "Well, I better get going," I say. "Have a good one."

I climb into our CRV, start it up, and put it in reverse. When I feel the slight resistance at the rear right wheel, I figure a piece of the wood I stacked must have fallen off the pile; that's what the obstruction must be. What are they yelling about over there? I pull ahead a few feet, then back up again, depressing the gas pedal just enough to make it over the obstacle. In the rearview mirror, I see them running toward us, arms waving. What the fuck, man? Why is she screaming?

And then I know.

Excerpted from The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb. Copyright © 2025 by Wally Lamb. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.