Agee (Sweet Eyes; Strange Angels) delivers an enthralling family saga set in Missouri's boot heel, a place so remote, "it's as if the whole state of Missouri has been trying to shake it off for years, like a vestigial tail." Seventeen-year-old Hedie Rails arrives in 1930 as the pregnant bride of Clement Ducharme at his family estate, but little does Hedie know that she's carrying on a tradition: in 1811, young Annie Lark is rescued from the Midwestern New Madrid earthquake by French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme and becomes the first "river wife." Hedie discovers this-along with the dark side of the Ducharme legacy-through old diaries she finds at the family home. She also learns of the other women involved with Jacques: Omah, the freed slave girl who joins him in river piracy, and Laura, his fortune-hunting second wife whose daughter, Maddie, is Clement's mother As Hedie's experiences become increasingly ominous (where does Clement go at night, and why does he come home beaten up? Are those footsteps she hears upstairs?), parallels develop between her life and those of past river wives. Lush historical detail, a plot brimming with danger, love and betrayal, and a magnificent cast (Jacques is larger than life, and the wives are sassy, sexed-up spitfires) will keep readers entranced. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In the early 1900s, when Hedie Rails arrives at Jacques' Landing, MS, to marry Clement Dumarche, she discovers diaries harkening back to the early 1800s that reveal the complex life and loves of Clement's grandfather, a frontier river pirate. With an eight-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A catfish stew of a novel from Agee (The Weight of Dreams, 1999, etc.), covering three generations of a Missouri farming family that can't shake its river pirate roots. In 1930, Hedie Rails marries charming spendthrift Clement Ducharme and moves to his farm at Jacques' Landing. Desperate for money to keep the farm afloat, Clement disappears frequently on probably criminal business. Left behind, pregnant and lonely, Hedie finds a journal--a too obviously artificial literary device--that tells the Ducharme family history. In 1811, river pirate Jacques Ducharme saves Annie Lark's life after an earthquake leaves her crippled. They marry but their early passion withers when Jacques' vicious dogs kill their child in a horrifying scene. Annie dies in a flood. Jacques' main cohort and confidante becomes Omah, the daughter of freed slaves. After the Civil War, Jacques murders his second wife, Laura, who has proved herself both unfaithful and greedy. Omah helps him raise Laura's daughter, Little Maddie, the novel's one lovable character. When Jacques finally dies, his will requires that Little Maddie remain celibate if she wants to keep the farm. Instead, after a 13-year love affair, she uses a horse to bribe her way into getting both farm and marriage, then dies two years later. Her son is Clement. He squanders Hedie's love with his unquenchable lust for money, and possibly other women. After Hedie miscarries their first child, she befriends the black couple down the road whose daughter, Omah's granddaughter, India, becomes Clement's apparent lover. Then Hedie, again pregnant, finds Clement shot in the front seat of his car with India dead in the back. She follows his dying orders to bury him in quicksand so she can keep Jacques' Landing and raise the next Ducharme generation. Despite fevered descriptions and various half-developed characters meandering down plot paths leading nowhere, the violence-spiked romance upon violence-spiked romance becomes addictive. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Agee's long-awaited fifth novel is an all-consuming experience. From the moment Hedie Rails arrives in Jacques' Landing, Missouri, in 1930 as Clement Ducharme's young bride, readers are swept into a tale of passion, deceit, and misfortune steeped in the best southern gothic tradition. This isn't a land to love, is it? remarks Hedie about the unforgiving, table-flat Missouri Bootheel region, and she's right. As she reads the diaries of Annie Lark, crippled in the New Madrid earthquake of 1811 and rescued by French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme, Hedie learns about her new husband's disturbing family legacy. The enigmatic Jacques amasses a fortune as a Mississippi river pirate, and the quest for his illicit wealth preoccupies the women of later generations. These include Laura, an Irish adventuress who becomes Jacques' second wife; Omah, the freed slave who's his partner in crime; and Maddie, Laura's daughter. This mesmerizing saga teeming with memorable characters, sharp depictions of frontier life, and lucid, beautifully wrought prose will haunt readers long afterward. --Sarah Johnson Copyright 2007 Booklist