SWIFT RIVER by Essie Chambers

Diamond is the only Black person left in Swift River, now that her father has disappeared.  She is a 300-pound teenager who lives with her white mother.  She has never met any of her father’s family, but she gets to know them via letters that start arriving from her father’s cousin Lena.  Since her mother does not drive, forcing them to hitchhike from place to place, Diamond has been tucking away some of her earnings from her job at the local motel so that she can take driving lessons.  She has aced the written test and now finds herself practicing driving along with her classmate Shelly under the tutelage of a frisky young man. This would all be funny if it weren’t so sad—Diamond’s eating habits, her loneliness, her mother’s poor judgment, and especially the uncertainty of her father’s whereabouts.  He is presumed dead, but Diamond and her mother have had to wait seven years to obtain a death certificate that will free up his life insurance money.  In one flashback Diamond’s father gives her a $100 bill when she loses a tooth while they are away from home.  This is not a family that can afford tooth fairy gifts of $100, and I did not understand why her father did this.  Diamond and her mother are both shocked, but the ultimate fate of the $100 bill is even weirder.  Thanks to superb writing, though, this book was a joy to read.  On the one hand, I did not love having most of Diamond’s family history conveyed via sometimes lengthy letters that appear in the book.  However, this technique limited the number of timelines in the rest of the narrative to just stuff that happened during Diamond’s lifetime and made it easy to recognize what was ancient history.  Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.