Item: Swift River
Rating: 4
Author: Catherine

Swift River by Essie J. Chambers
Published by Simon & Schuster
Publication date: June 4, 2024
Genres: Book Clubs, Debut, Fiction, Coming-of-age, Social Issues

Bookshop

Swift River is both the title of Essie Chambers’ debut and the town where the novel is set. It’s about Diamond Newberry, a 16-year-old girl who stands out, but not for her flashy name or sparkling personality. She’s morbidly obese and ever since her father disappeared 7 years ago she’s the only Black person in town. Her white mother is of little help. She doesn’t drive and can’t keep a job, but is the only friend or family that Diamond has. She feels isolated and stuck with no way out until she receives a letter from one of her father’s relatives in Georgia and begins connecting with the Black community and her own history via the women in her father’s family.

I often enjoy coming-of-age stories but this added a layer I’ve not read or felt before. This mixed-up teenager is singular in her world. No one looks like her, not even her own mother, who is a narcissist and who feeds on creating this bond of ‘us against the world’. She makes it even harder for Diamond to separate herself from her, to grow up, until she gets this letter and suddenly, she’s got family. Family she can’t tell her mother about, but who fill in the blank spots of her history and who begin to give her the identity she’s longed for. Enough so, that she does make a friend and start to strike out on her own, but taking driving lessons.

Chambers manages to express both the turmoil of racial awakening and identity at the same time as going through the usual teenage angst especially around her weight. There’s a depth and maturity to her writing in these scenes that’s a bit lacking in other parts of the novel. Namely, the transitions between the past and present where we’re introduced to a distant relative of Diamond’s who lived in Swift River decades ago and was the reason her father was moved there as a child. Clara’s story is one of even greater strife and isolation than Diamond’s but serves as a conduit to give the teenager hope for her future. It also serves to highlight the racism of the North, not something that immediately comes to mind.

Stylistic issues aside, I loved how Chambers made the reader feel Diamond’s situation. Extreme loneliness alongside the need to take care of her fragile mother who won’t take care of either of them. The tightness of being alone and seeing no way out and then the expansiveness that comes with hearing from someone who is just like you. I’m not a Black teenager with a weight issue, but I shared her pain and frustration. The ability of an author to do this—write experiences in a way that universalizes them—is one of my favorite aspects of reading. Swift River is a strong debut and I look forward to what Chambers does next.

This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org and Amazon.com which means if you click on a link and make a purchase of any kind, I get a small commission (at no cost to you).