Until she was 15, Natalie Ward believed her world was perfect and that her family would always be together on the small dairy farm carved out of a remote mountain valley in Southern British Columbia. Then came River, the American draft dodger who became her family’s hired hand the summer that a new highway opened the valley to the larger world beyond. But thirty-five years after River’s arrival, the Ward family is shattered. With her mother dying, Natalie must return to the home she has spent her entire adult life running from, as the family’s dark secrets and betrayals threaten to scar a new generation. Evoking Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake and Carol Shields’ Unless, Milner renders characters who are achingly human and plots a story with masterful precision. After River eloquently captures the moral and social upheavals of the late ’60s and marks the emergence of a dazzling Canadian talent.

Donna Milner is the author After River, an internationally acclaimed novel, published in twelve countries and translated into eight languages. Her second novel, The Promise of Rain, was a Globe and Mail top 100 pick for 2010.Born Donna Jones in Victoria, British Columbia, Donna spent her childhood in Vancouver. As an adult she relocated to the town of Rossland in the heart of BC’s West Kootenay, and ten years later moved to the central interior city of Williams Lake. She now lives in an off-the-grid, eco-friendly lakeside home in the Cariboo woods with her husband, Tom, and their dog, Beau. She is currently working on her fourth novel.

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