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Fiction Literary

River Meets the Sea

A Novel

by (author) Rachael Moorthy

Publisher
House of Anansi Press Inc
Initial publish date
May 2023
Category
Literary, General, Family Life
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487011420
    Publish Date
    May 2023
    List Price
    $24.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487011437
    Publish Date
    May 2023
    List Price
    $13.99

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Description

A spellbinding, spirited tale of two men exploring masculinity, race, and belonging in a desperate search to feel at home in their own skins.

An enthralling nautical epic, River Meets the Sea traces the dual timelines of a white-passing Indigenous foster child in 1940s Vancouver and a teenage immigrant in the suburbs of Nanaimo in the 1970s.

A natural-born storyteller, Ronny is a left-handed “alley mutt” without a birth certificate who searches for his mother everywhere — most powerfully, he hears her voice in the surging Stó:lō River. Born in the middle of the ocean on a merchant ship departing Sri Lanka, Chandra is a Tamil boy with “skin like a charred eggplant” who finds his haven from the pressure to assimilate by swimming and surfing in the Salish Sea.

Moving gracefully between these parallel stories like a wave, the novel traces the seemingly separate lives of these sensitive young men and their everlasting connections to water. When their troubled paths inevitably cross, they form a sacred bond based on the mutual understanding of what it means to be othered, illuminating the interconnectedness of humanity and our innate relationship with the natural world.

About the author

RACHAEL MOORTHY is a Canadian writer of mixed ancestry who is still trying to figure out how to answer the question “Where are you from?” She has a bachelor’s of writing from the University of Victoria. Rachael was shortlisted for the 2020 Far Horizons Award for Poetry, and her fiction has been published in PRISM international, SAD Magazine, Revue Zinc, Una Terra, The Pigeon, This Side of West, The Malahat Review, and Young Writers of Canada. Born in Matsqui, BC, she lives in Switzerland.

Rachael Moorthy's profile page