Overview

The death of her father begins Dorothy Weil's search for what causes the family's ""spinning off in all directions like the pieces of Chaos."" She embarks on a river odyssey, traveling the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers by steamboat, towboat, and even an old-fashioned flatboat. The river brings her family back as she records the stories of her fellow ""river rats"": steamboat veterans, deckhands, captains and cooks. The River Home takes the reader into a world few ever glimpse, that of America's river boats. In the fast-paced narrative with incisive characterizations and dialogue, the author introduces us to this vivid milieu, and a gallery of fascinating people. We meet her father, a ""wild river man from the Kentucky hills,"" her mother, ""a proper girl from a Cincinnati Dutch clan,"" and her brother, a fourth-generation river man, as well as the artists and academics she meets in her adult life. Weil's voice is clear and wry, as well as poetic, bringing out both the sadness and joys of a family torn by mismatching backgrounds. Her themes speak to all: the confusion brought be family conflict, the strength of family love no matter how troubled the relationships, the mortality we all face, the importance of where we come from and where we go.

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9780821414057

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Reviews

Weil's account of being a 'river rat' is so unusual that it piques our curiosity and adds a different voice and perspective to the memoir genre. The work is universal in the sense that readers, especially women readers of Weil's generation, have experienced much of the social and cultural changes that Weil undergoes and have coped with these themselves in their own ways. -- Ceil Cleveland, author of Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow?

The river journeys provide an arresting motif for an unusually rich and extremely moving memoir. -- Lee Smith, author of News of the Spirit Weil's account of being a 'river rat' is so unusual that it piques our curiosity and adds a different voice and perspective to the memoir genre. The work is universal in the sense that readers, especially women readers of Weil's generation, have experienced much of the social and cultural changes that Weil undergoes and have coped with these themselves in their own ways. -- Ceil Cleveland, author of Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow?

Although not a household name even in her hometown of Cincinnati, author and TV producer Weil (Continuing Education, 1979) offers an autobiography of wide appeal, skillfully mixing the story of her extended family with a vivid picture of an era-America from the '30s to the '50s-that seems increasingly exotic. Weil's barely literate father emerged from 1920s rural Kentucky as a riverboat worker, ultimately rising to captain of the huge Mark Twain-style boats that still plied the rivers between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. She and her brother led an idyllic life until, when she was five, the Depression wiped out the riverboat business. Suddenly, her father was just another unskilled and unemployed worker, and the next five years passed in brutal poverty. Modern readers will scratch their heads to read of families living month after month on essentially no income. Nowadays they would be homeless, but during the '30s, they moved between relatives and shabby lodgings where, until forced to move, they paid no rent. Then they paid no rent again. In 1940, they moved back onto a riverboat, this one permanently docked in Cincinnati as a yacht club where her father lived as watchman. From the war onward, both the country and Weil's family achieved more financial security, though not more happiness. An ill-matched pair, her educated mother resented her father's lack of income and his eagerness to spend whatever he had. The two engaged in interminable shouting quarrels; at other times, Weil's mother was disabled by her own depression. In between, they were dutiful parents and not abusive but dismal role models. Weil's brother ran away to join the navy as soon as he could. And she ran away to college. An engaging tale of growing up around the great rivers of the Midwest-and perhaps one of the last memoirs by someone brought up during the Depression. (Kirkus Reviews)

In her memoir of life as a 'river rat' ... Weil brings her friends, family, and acquaintances to life with crackling vitality.

Author Information

Dorothy Weil is a feature writer, novelist, poet, and a producer with TV Image, Inc., a video production team whose documentaries about the Ohio River have won many national awards. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband and paints whenever possible in a studio above a neighborhood bar.

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