Little Chapel on the River

Last week I had the pleasure of dropping in on the Omni Book Club in Huron, Ohio (60 miles West of Cleveland) by speakerphone as they discussed Little Chapel on the River. It's always surprising to me how five years after publication, I still get new questions about the book. One reader, Elaine Waterfield , pointed to the book's descriptions of the Hudson River with its ebbing and flowing, which led the Indians to dub it "river-that-flows-two-ways," and said she saw it as a metaphor for the advancing plot of Guinan's and the memories of my childhood. "Was that plan or an instinct?" she asked. I'd always intended for the Hudson River to be a character in the book - in part because I thought it symbolized the ability to create a fulfilling life that included both the country and the city. "Like the river that flows two ways, the trick was finding room for both currents," I write toward the end of the book. The deeper I got into the book'