The River Sorrow |  | Author: Craig Holden
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 2024282
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 386
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0385312075
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385312073
ASIN: 0385312075
Publication Date: September 1, 1994
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Newcomer Craig Holden, one of the new generation of outstanding contemporary fiction writers, delivers a riveting novel set in the stark, bleak plains of the Midwest -- the Midwest of strip malls and dilapidated, long-abandoned steel mills. The Midwest of Morgantown General Hospital in southern Michigan. When a burn victim is brought into the ER, a young doctor's life is changed irrevocably. For the arrival of John Doe is just the beginning of a nightmare that will hurtle Dr. Adrian Lancaster into the netherworld of violence and obsession that once nearly destroyed him. Suddenly Lancaster finds himself the prime suspect in a string of murders. Shadowed by police and seeking refuge in the arms of a mysterious young woman, Lancaster risks his career and his life to follow the body-strewn trail that could lead him to the murderer. On the road and underground, only facing the terrifying truth will save him. A brilliant novel that hits hard from page one, The River Sorrow moves us, haunts us... and holds us spellbound until the final unforgettable scene.
From the Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 First Time Winner July 29, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Here is a story of unrelenting gloom yet also one of justice and ultimately redemption. The author, in his first try, almost makes the classic error of introducing too many characters but by the end all is resolved. Our hero, Lancaster, is a doctor and a former drug addict who emerged from rehab to work in the emergency room. In the process he lost the love of his life, a woman who one day disappears after turning him in.
The gloomy, Michigan winter mood is perfectly captured as the doctor discovers an apparent attempt to frame him for a series of murders related to "Fang", a synthetic heroin that is incredibly powerful and extremely hard to manufacture. The drug disappeared years ago but yet it is back - why? Yet the tale involved more than the doctor. Two other characters appear almost out of the blue. Storm, a former addict and sister of one of the victimes, is startling as a woman seeing vengeance. The detective, a small town officer, investigates and slowly the reader is drawn into his story of love and heartbreak. The hero has flashbacks of younger, carefree days of romantic love adn these relieve the dark mood of the story. The ending is both surprising and satisfying - the last moments of the sheriff are so strong they stay with the reader long after the book is finished.
If you want good prose with an almost poetic touch - if you like adult, realistic characters - if you believe that human relationships are what stories are about - then this is the book for you. Bravo!
I NEED HELP WITH THIS BOOK!!! January 26, 2005
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Can anybody tell me more about the characters, plot, theme and setting?? I am reading this book, and I have to write a paper for it, and I need "Academic Reviews". This must detail the characters, plot, theme, setting, style of writing and the like. Please help me with any and all information! Thank you! God Bless!
 Simply Awful October 15, 2004
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Craig Holden has done some very good writing in his career, but this book can't be included in that statement. I loved his book Four Corners of Night so I thought I'd give this one a try, but I put it down after slogging through the first 200 pages. The plot seemed mildly interesting, but the characters are so one-dimensional and shallow that I didn't care one bit about anything that happened to them. They were all boring, poorly-created cliches. The writing in this book was also terrible. Holden's prose in Four Corners of Night was some of the best I've seen in years, so he's obviously learned a lot about his craft, but this novel reads like a high school kid's attempt at writing a "cool" book. Don't waste your time on this one.
A flawed hero September 8, 2004
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Holden's 1994 debut novel features a protagonist whose flaws chip away relentlessly at his hero status.
Adrian Lancaster is a talented emergency room physician who makes no attempt to conceal his heroin-addicted past and has made enemies among the police in his efforts to establish a local clinic for addicts.
As the links to his past proliferate in a series of murders establishing him as a primary suspect, Lancaster is forced to conduct his own underground investigation, accompanied by a strange young woman who leads him back to addiction.
The story is tense and suspenseful, the medical details interesting, the character exploration deep and insightful. Lancaster is a more credible character for his weaknesses, but the reader becomes increasingly unable to identify with this realistically repellant addict. Holden strives for something more literary than the usual thriller, and succeeds, while depriving the reader of the vicarious vindication inherent in the genre.
Mistakenly convinced of lifes tragedies November 26, 2003
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ridiculous, is the only thing I can say about those whose reviews I have read here. One says that a book should stay in your mind, probably from a person that has read all of the Harry Potter stories, although decent not memorable. Another atates that the course of the story was horrid and temultuous, probably one who has yet to realize that the world is filled with worse then what Holden talks about. The book has stayed with me till this day. I read it almost 10 years ago and then again and again and again, a total of 4 times I have enjoyed this drive into the hell that is the lives that the rest of us dont wish on anyone. Are there things in this book that make you shudder? Yes. Are there characters that make you writhe in your seat? Yes. But without these emotional stigmas then we wouldnt be able to sustain the oxygen that enables us to carry on our daily lives. Wouldnt want the characters in this book to be anything nor anyone else. Wish you had more works like this out there Mr. Holden, have you ever thought about a screenplay, I would love to write it for you, or perhaps you could edit the one I have???
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