The River

From Helen Bryan, international bestselling author of The Valley and The Mountain, comes the final chapter in her epic historical trilogy of love, loyalty, and family in the heart of Virginia.

It's the dawn of the twentieth century, post-Reconstruction, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers—the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee—a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton.

Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change—change that creates a vast, opportune, and unpredictable new beginning for generations yet to come.

Helen Bryan is a Virginia native who grew up in Tennessee. After graduating from Barnard College, she moved to England, where she studied law and was a barrister for ten years before devoting herself to writing full-time. A member of the Inner Temple, Bryan is the international bestselling author of the World War II novel War Brides; the historical novel The Sisterhood; the biography Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, which won an award of merit from the Colonial Dames of America; and the Valley Trilogy, featuring The Valley, The Mountain, and The River and based on Bryan’s childhood stories of ancestors who settled in Virginia and Maryland before Tennessee became a state. She is also the author of the legal handbook Planning Applications and Appeals.