Book cover of The River Remembers

Book description

Samantha Lockwood, Day Sets, and Harriet Robinson come to Fort Snelling from very different backgrounds. It's 1835 and the world is changing, fast, and they are all struggling to keep up. After she refuses another suitor he's chosen for her, Samantha's father banishes her to live in the territory with…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The River Remembers as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Ulleseit skillfully connects the stories of three very different women whose paths intersect in Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, in 1835.

Samantha Lockwood is based on Ulleseit’s ancestor. Harriet Robinson is an enslaved woman, who married Dred Scott. Day Sets, the daughter of a Dakota chief, is a fictional character as far as I know.

I greatly admire how Ulleseit seems able to channel what each of these women might have felt and thought. The inclusion of historical people, such as Harriet and Dred Scott, Zachary Taylor, and his daughter, Sarah, who fancies the young Jefferson Davis, adds…

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