“Epic and cinematic, wrought and soulful, it is a deeply serious novel, yet full of tenderness . . . its traces will haunt a reader’s heart and mind.” —Joan Frank, The Washington Post
“An expert storyteller, Raeff deftly draws readers into the worlds, however big or small, that her characters inhabit.” —Erica Flint, San Francisco Chronicle
“It is wonderful to see multi-generational narratives that involve queerness as fluidly as queerness happens—that is to say, queerness as normalized . . . We need more depictions of love like this, more depictions of landscape like this, more depictions of what love can look like when it is told from many angles—with both the light and the dark . . . The stories Raeff tells, and the fluency with which they are told, earn their place in a canon that is timeless, classic, and necessary. This is a triumph of a novel and a must-read for our times.” —July Westhale, Lambda Literary
“In this novel, Anne Raeff weaves a multigenerational tale of love and war while at the same time casting a magic spell. Her authorial voice is incantatory. Characters and events caught in recent tragedies take on aspects of myth. The novel feels unique, timely, and yet timeless. I couldn’t put it down.” —Elizabeth Farnsworth, author of A Train Through Time
“Anne Raeff is a master of the family novel, and of the diaspora novel, and of the novel that spans decades and continents. Is there nothing she can’t do? With Only the River she gives us, in her trademark exquisite prose, the deeply moving story of two families joined and separated by a tiny patch of land in Nicaragua, a country as passionate and divided as the unforgettable characters who populate this marvelous book.” —Ann Packer, author of The Children’s Crusade
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