Deep Waters

By Walter Kirn

The river that runs through Breena Clarke's accomplished first novel, River, Cross My Heart (Little, Brown; 245 pages; $23), is the sluggish brown Potomac, benevolent on the surface but treacherous beneath. Along with other young African Americans from their Georgetown neighborhood, Johnnie Mae Bynum and her sister Clara are forced to use the river as a swimming hole owing to a race ban at their local pool. It's the 1920s, and the girls are part of a steady migration from the fields of the rural South to the streets of bustling Washington. Things are supposed to be better there, more sophisticated, more advanced, but when the river suddenly takes the life of little Clara, the Bynums are forced back on their durable old-country ways. In a city caught between tradition and progress, prejudice and dawning tolerance, the family must double back--the way a river does--to gather composure for its next push onward.

Clarke, who administers the Editorial Diversity Program at Time Inc., has written a novel that is all about change, but gradual change: the kind that transforms people's lives while they're preoccupied with the daily chores. This story of Johnnie Mae's eventual triumph--and of a city's grudging coming to terms with the hopes and dreams she typifies--flows quietly but carves deep channels in the reader's mind.

--By Walter Kirn