In the River Sweet

National Book Award finalist Patricia Henley captivates us with this engrossing novel of a woman whose long-held secret will transform her life and her marriage. From all appearances, Ruth Anne Bond is enviably lucky. Her husband, Johnny, still treats her like a young lover. Her grown daughter is a staunch friend. Her steady work and devotion to the church have quietly made her a pillar of the community. Then one long Indiana summer brings some unexpected communiquesincluding one she has both craved and feared for thirty years. As long-hidden truths threaten to emerge, for the first time in her marriage Ruth Anne is faced with memories she and Johnny never discuss: of a year spent in Saigon in 1968and a past she has yet to acknowledge. Probing questions of family and faith, Patricia Henley offers us a tender, far-sighted novel about seeking answers and achieving grace. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Patricia Henley’s first novel, <b>Hummingbird House</b><i>,</i> was a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award and <i>The New Yorker</i> Best Fiction Book Award. Henley has also written two books of poetry, <b>Learning to Die</b> and <b>Back Roads</b><i>,</i> and three story collections: <b>Friday Night at Silver Star</b><i>,</i> which won the 1985 Montana Arts Council First Book Award; <b>The Secret of Cartwheels</b><i>;</i> and <b>Worship of the Common Heart: New and Selected Stories</b><i>.</i> Her stories have been published in such magazines as <i>The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine,</i> and <i>Northwest Review,</i> and anthologized in <b>The Best American Short Stories</b> and <b>The Pushcart Prize</b><i> </i>anthology<i>.</i> Henley lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, where she teaches in the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at Purdue University.