CANR

• Swift River: A Read with Jenna Pick - 2024 Simon & Schuster, New York, NY

• Essie Chambers website - https://essiechambers.com/

  ESSIE CHAMBERS is an author and award-winning independent producer. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, and Baldwin for the Arts. Previously, she worked as a television executive, and was a producer on the Oscar-shortlisted documentary Descendant, which was released by the Obamas’ Higher Ground production company and Netflix in 2022. Swift River is her debut novel.

• Shelf Awareness - https://pagesofjulia.com/2024/02/23/maximum-shelf-author-interview-essie-chambers/

  Maximum Shelf author interview: Essie Chambers
  Posted on February 23, 2024 by pagesofjulia
  Following Monday’s review of Swift River, here’s Essie Chambers: One More River to Cross.

  Essie Chambers earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and Baldwin for the Arts. A former film and television executive, Chambers was a producer on the 2022 documentary Descendant. Her debut novel, Swift River (Simon & Schuster, June 4, 2024), is a complex, place-centered coming-of-age reckoning with race and class.

  What was the beginning kernel of this book?

  Essie Chambers
  (photo: Christine Jean Chambers)

  I wanted to write about the experience of being a young person growing up in a small, weird, homogeneous town and being isolated, the only one. The image came out of nowhere, of a bigger-bodied person and her tiny mother walking on the side of the road. I knew that I had to write about these people. That was the powerful, impactful seed. I grew up in a small town; it’s a very isolating thing if you can’t get around. That very first sentence: “The summer after I turn sixteen, I am so fat I can’t ride my bike anymore.” That sentence came with such clarity. They have to walk. She’s a bigger-bodied person; what would it mean for that to be the way she got around?
  Why include letters from Lena and Clara?

  I grew up writing letters to my elders. I was forced to write thank-you letters, and I came around more willingly with my grandmother; we wrote regularly. I treasure those letters. I got to know a lot about my mom’s family through that correspondence. That form is a beautiful way to talk across generations. I knew the present-day story I wanted to tell. As I built the layers and came to understand how big a role history was going to play, I knew I had to connect the history to Diamond in a personal, meaningful way, to deepen the mystery of the community and what happened to Pop, and to give Clara, a character from another time, a real voice.

  With Lena, I wanted Diamond to finally have a way to connect to the Black side of her family, but I wanted to maintain the sense of isolation that Diamond had with her mother; that would be gone if they met face to face. The letters were a way for a seed to be planted, and for me to show the ripples in Diamond’s life.

  Inheritance is such a strong theme in this book. We think of inheritance as money; for her inheritance to be stories and letters just felt really powerful.

  Your title is the name of the town. Is the book as much about place as it is about Diamond?

  It’s absolutely just as much about place. The town is a character. But actually I thought of the title as being the river, rather than the town. River in these mill town communities is so central–it’s power, literally. Life-giving power. Rivers have many meanings across cultures. Crossing a river can mean transitioning from one phase of life to another. In Black culture and traditions and spirituality, river can mean life and rebirth, a place where you get baptized, where you wash away your sins and get renewal. All sorts of spirituals have “river” in their title. I started thinking about one called “One More River to Cross.” The notion was that getting to freedom was all about crossing many rivers. Just when we think we’ve crossed all the rivers there’s one more to cross. Freedom is so elusive. A river is also dangerous and fast and perilous–it’s just so rich.

  When Clara is falling in love with Jacques, she talks about not being able to find language for it. It was like the experience of being held by God, when you don’t have language and you don’t have words, and something is holding you and you can’t see it–she likens it to floating on the Swift River, where she just feels held by something divine. What a beautiful feeling that was.

  Was there research involved?

  A ton, and research led me to the most important part of the book. I knew that I wanted to write about a Black person’s experience growing up as the only person of color in a community. I started thinking about Pop’s experience. I wanted to do more digging about Black people in rural New England. I was shocked at how little was written about them. I’m drawn to these hidden or forgotten histories. I was familiar with the sundown town, where a predominantly white community excludes Black people with laws, harassment, terrorism, or violence–the name comes from signs that were often posted right at the welcome sign, warning Black people that if they were caught after sunset, they might be killed. I had a lot of assumptions about racist violence in the North versus the South; I was surprised to learn that sundown towns were a very Northern phenomenon. It kind of blew my mind open. I found one book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James Loewen. A detail jumped out at me: sometimes an exception for one or two Black people was made if they were serving an essential function. If they were domestics or something, they would be allowed to stay. And I thought, Diamond is going to be descended from a person who was allowed to stay after a violent expulsion of the Black community. Boom, that was it. That’s my connection. That gives her roots; that gives me a chance to explore another character who is experiencing a different version of being the only one. It cracked the story wide open for me. That came from my research. I highly recommend that book.

  How does your work in film and television translate to writing a novel?

  I am a very visual storyteller. I often see a scene first: the image of Diamond and Ma on the side of the road. It’s incredibly exciting. Seeing an image first generates an emotion, and then I get to find the language to channel the emotion. The image gives me confidence that I know what the shape is going to be.

  I spent a lot of time telling stories for kids and young adults in TV. I love telling stories about childhood; that moment in life is just so rich. We’ve all felt the pain of living through this very particular developmental stage. The language is “never” and “forever.” The feelings are so big–it’s not necessary for big things to happen in order to feel that pain and create drama. That was very much a mantra in telling this story: big things don’t need to happen in order to be felt in a big way.

  Is the perspective of big bodies under-represented? What does this add to Diamond’s story?

  I felt like everybody should be able to see themselves in books. I want more, more, more: diversity of story, where weight is not stigma, where weight loss isn’t the goal. Bodies not being represented in a stereotypical way. That really had a massive impact on how I thought about telling Diamond’s story. I didn’t want her to be skinny and happy at the end. I didn’t want weight to define her journey. I just wanted people to feel what it felt like to be in that body. It’s a way that she feels like an outsider, and that’s a universal experience.

  This interview originally ran on January 24, 2024 as a Shelf Awareness special issue.

• American Booksellers Association website - https://www.bookweb.org/news/indies-introduce-qa-essie-chambers-1630730

  05
  2024
  Indies Introduce
  An Indies Introduce Q&A with Essie Chambers
  Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
  Essie Chambers is the author of Swift River, a Summer/Fall 2024 Indies Introduce season and a June 2024 Indie Next List pick.

  Lisa Swayze of Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, NY, served on the panel that selected Swift River for Indies Introduce.

  “In gorgeous and fiery language, Chambers invites us into Diamond Newberry’s world. The only Black person left in Swift River after Pop’s mysterious disappearance. Diamond thinks she stands out for all of the wrong reasons,” said Swayze. “Getting her license will solve one of those problems, but it's also one more thing Diamond and her mother disagree on. As Diamond gains confidence through driving and learns more about the history of her family and Swift River, she begins to imagine something different for herself. Where will that imagination take her now?”

  Chambers sat down with Swayze to discuss her debut title.

  This is a transcript of their discussion. You can listen to the interview on the ABA podcast, BookED.

  Lisa Swayze: Hi, everyone! I'm Lisa Swayze from Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, New York's cooperative indie bookstore, and I was fortunate to chair the Indies Introduce panel for adult fiction and nonfiction this spring. One of our favorite books across the board was Essie Chambers’ Swift River. So I'm thrilled to be talking with the author today.

  One of my co-panelists, Steve Iwanski, from Charter Books in Newport, Rhode Island, said, “A debut novel this assured, confident, and powerful is a rare event, but Swift River proves that Essie Chambers has arrived with the force of a thunderbolt. The world conjured here — a world where the aches, angst, and awkwardness of adolescence mix with the pain of poverty and loss — feels so lived-in and authentic that you can’t help but step inside Diamond’s life. Its portrait of a late 1980s western Massachusetts sundown town is a refreshingly honest addition to the mosaic of American small-town life."

  Our author, Essie Chambers earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, and Baldwin For The Arts. A former film and television executive, she was a producer on the documentary Descendant which was released by the Obamas’ Higher Ground Production Company and Netflix in 2022. Swift River is her debut novel.

  So welcome, Essie —

  Essie Chambers: Thank you!

  LS: — author of Swift River, a Summer/Fall 2024 Indies Introduce title which, by the way, comes out next week. Don't know when people will hear this, but while we're talking, it's coming out next week.

  EC: Oh, great! Yes, good, good, good. Okay. So much love from you guys, it's just been incredible.

  LS: Well, I have lots of questions. In Swift River, the town of Swift River is its own character, and provides a vivid and complex setting. How did you come up with the setting, and was there research involved with that?

  EC: So, I grew up in Western Massachusetts. Swift River is fictional, but I did grow up in a small town that was a former mill town. It was much more suburban than Swift River. I think there were a lot of towns around me that were more rural that I pulled from — kind of a mash-up of those. But I really understand small-town texture, and that was a lot of fun to write because I lived that. But I did do a ton of research on old mill towns, and how they functioned when the mills were kind of at the center of all life. And then that kind of devastation to a community after that industry leaves, which is what was happening in Swift River. And you know the characters are so haunted in the story by loss. I just really loved the idea of the town itself also being haunted by loss. You know, these giant crumbling factory buildings everywhere you look. So I drew from personal experience, but also did a lot of research.

  LS: And I think you can tell both of those things in the reading. It's really great.

  EC: Thank you, thank you.

  LS: Diamond is such a unique but also very believable character. She stands out in so many ways, some of which she's not happy about. How did her character develop?

  EC: Well, thank you for that, first of all. You know, I wrote this book over the course of many years, and there were a lot of different iterations of Diamond.

  I think I always knew the basic facts about her: that she was going to be the only person of color in this town, that her family was going to be isolated, and that they would be mourning the loss of this father — that he would be kind of haunting the book. But we're really talking about her voice — she needed to be wise, but believably sixteen, and I wanted her to have a kind of emotional intelligence, but not be too adult. And she needed to grow, but not too much. As I started developing the layers that came from the past, she became clearer. I think really, when she came most sharply into focus for me, was understanding that her voice had to carry a lot of painful stuff and not weigh down the book.

  I write with these two post-its on my computer. One says, “Tell the truth,” and the other says, “Make yourself laugh,” and I feel like those two things are at the heart of Diamond's voice. She sees the world through a kind of comedic lens and she tells it like it is.

  LS: Yeah, it's great. As Diamond struggles to find her footing and her place in the world, her connection to a long lost aunt provides crucial information about the history of her family and of Swift River. Will you talk to me about how you see family history and American history, and maybe even generational trauma, as important to this book?

  EC: Well, yeah, it's a big, great question. You know, family history for Diamond — the connection that you were talking about that she found — it's really at the heart of her personal journey. She is kind of rootless. Her family is very isolated, and her only connection is to her mother and this father that's been missing. So, getting roots — getting rooted in this family history — is what gives her the kind of courage and confidence to make a lot of critical life choices.

  But I think for me, I've been thinking a lot about the connection between the two things: family history and American history. There are all kinds of ways that history is recorded, and — particularly if you're part of a marginalized group in this country — oral history is often the only way that our stories are carried and our truths are recorded. And I learned this with the documentary that I made a couple of years ago, too: oral history is not a lesser history. And in that way, family history and telling our family stories, it's so essential, because that's American history. And so with Diamond learning about this really painful part of American history, I think all of it is what feeds her sense of herself, and knowing how she wants to move through the world, to stay or to leave.

  LS: We talked about it in your bio, and you just mentioned one of the documentaries you worked on. You already have a career as a documentary filmmaker. So two questions: how does that influence the way you write — which again, you did mention a little bit — and why write a novel?

  EC: I think I'm gonna answer the second part first. Writing books was the first thing that I ever wanted to do — and I think I also wanted to be a singer, or DJ, or something like that. I was always pointed in the direction of writing. I studied English in undergrad and I was a journalist briefly. And I just sort of got on this beautiful career path where I was helping other people be creative, and it was just creative enough to prevent me from really pursuing my own dream. But it's not a thing that came out of a later part of my life. It's always been the thing. And this was really about: when am I going to do it? If I die, this will be my greatest regret. That's sort of how I felt about writing.

  So it was, really, my first love, but what I was doing while I was not writing was wishing that I could at some point find the space to do it. Before I was a documentary filmmaker, I worked as a creative executive, as a television executive for a teen channel called The N. It was part of the Nickelodeon and Viacom family, and so, just from a content perspective, I really fell in love with telling stories for that age especially, and that had a really big impact on this book.

  Telling a story from the point of view of someone who doesn't really have language yet for these big, big feelings that they're experiencing — it's just it's so fun and teenagers are so sort of tragicomic. I really got to tap into all that. So that had a big influence on the actual story, and then I don't know what came first, but I am a very visual writer. Often I will see a scene, or the shape of it, and then I will write to what I'm seeing. And in fact, I think one of the ways that Diamond and Ma — their being tethered to each other — came to me was, I saw them. I saw an image of them standing on the corner of a road. And it's like, who are these people walking in this small town? Just so vulnerable. And so I worked backwards into the image. It's had a profound influence on how I write.

  LS: Well, you can tell. I mean, when we talked about the setting and when you talk about seeing that image of the two of them. You can see it in the book, and you can see them.

  Sidebar, because it came up: when you talk about writing for this age, one of the things that I thought about is — this is a perspective of a teenager, but it's not a YA book. Did you think about whether it should have been a YA book at any point? Did you think about whether it would be, or were you always writing for an adult audience from that perspective?

  EC: It's a good question. I love YA books and I've adapted YA books when I worked in television before. But no, I was always pretty clear that it would be a book for adults. At one point in time there was even a perspective of the father occupying space, but I couldn't crack the voice.

  LS: Next book!

  EC: Exactly. This is a story about a group of women. Particularly, Diamond is at the center, but there are these other two women who also have voices in this story.

  LS: Yeah, it's great. I guess that the final question — I always like to ask this one of authors because it's profound, you know. What do you hope people take away from reading this book?

  EC: Oh, so much! I hope they like it. The Diamonds of the world so often don't have a voice. They aren't humanized. And so I think, for readers who are like Diamond, I hope they feel seen, and heard, and respected. And if they're not, I hope that they feel empathy, not pity, but really relate to all the universal issues of belonging and identity and all these things that Diamond grapples with. You know it's funny, the best compliment that I've gotten is this woman who had read it, and she said her life was completely different than Diamond’s, but it felt like she was in Diamond’s skin. That's exactly what I want.

  And then, I would say more broadly, I really hope people think about their own family stories and histories, and what home means to them.

  LS: Oh, that's so great! Well, anything else you want to add? We're so excited. I can't wait to have it in my store next week and to send it out in our subscription Book Club. The booksellers who read this, we were universally in love with it.

  EC: Oh, that means so much to me. Thank you so much. I got to talk to Steve as well. And it’s like meeting superstars. You guys are my superheroes. It's been great talking to you, and it's just such an honor to have gotten the kind of support from this community that I have. So, thank you.

  LS: You deserve it. And we are excited to share this book with the rest of the world.

  Swift River by Essie Chambers (Simon & Schuster, 9781668027912, Hardcover Fiction, $27.99) On Sale: 6/4/2024

• The Rumpus - https://therumpus.net/2024/06/28/life-is-tragicomic-an-interview-with-essie-chambers/

  Life is Tragicomic: A Conversation with Essie Chambers
  Crystal Hana KimJune 28, 2024

  I first encountered Diamond, the narrator of Essie Chambers’s much-acclaimed debut novel Swift River (Simon & Schuster, 2024), a decade ago. Diamond’s voice struck me right away in its refreshing honesty, intelligence, and humor. You see, Essie and I had been in thesis workshop together in graduate school in 2014. As she read pages of my first novel, I excitedly read hers. I was delighted then, to hear that her novel would be published in 2024. Finally, I thought, I’d be able to learn what happened to Diamond. Swift River is a tender, expansive, and necessary story about a mother and daughter mired in grief as they navigate one significant summer. It is a coming-of-age story about finding one’s place in the world. It’s a historical novel, told through letters. It’s a story about lineage, loss, family love, friendship, and what it means to move through life as the ‘other.’ Essie Chambers has packed so much into these pages, and it is a glorious, sumptuous, hilarious read.

  A week before the announcement that Swift River was the Read With Jenna pick for June, I spoke to Essie over Zoom about story origins, what is left off the page, starting from the image, the importance of humor in narratives, and more.

  –Crystal Hana Kim

  ***

  Crystal Hana Kim: I first met Diamond in 2014, in our thesis workshop with Ben Metcalf. I remember her so vividly—Diamond’s plan to lose her bike because she is fat and can no longer ride it, her secret driving lessons with Shelly, her complicated relationship with her mom. It was such a specific pleasure returning to these scenes in Swift River, tracking what stayed the same and what changed. Can you tell us more about the origin of this story?

  Essie Chambers: I always knew that I wanted to tell a story about being the only one in a world where no one looked like you. More specifically, the only person of color in an all-white town. That was my growing up experience, and so I wanted to figure out a way to capture it. I understood that with that experience comes a tremendous amount of isolation, so I was I was trying to figure out—will a family be at the center? A single character? I was playing around with different story strands and different characters and honestly, an image came to me of Diamond and her mother on the side of a road. I didn’t know what it meant. But in a small town, two people walking when everyone else is driving would make them so vulnerable. What would it feel like to be that exposed? It made me feel instantly emotional and protective of them. It was a spark, like, I have to write to this image.

  Hana Kim: That’s amazing. So the image of Diamond came to you first.

  Chambers: Diamond with her mother walking on the side of a road.

  Hana Kim: What was the process of writing a story around that image and turning it into a novel?

  Chambers: It actually started out as a short story. I wanted to figure out: Why are they on the road? Why are they not driving? Diamond is so limited by her size that she can’t even do this thing that she loves anymore, which is to ride a bike. That first sentence set the story in motion, in that she had gotten to the point where she was so big that she got rid of her own bike. I thought it was a weird twist, that she would let her own bike be stolen. It’s showing both agency and also desperation at the same time. I wrote to the image, and that set the story in motion. And those first two sentences were what really helped me understand her voice.

  Hana Kim: When did you start the novel and when did you finish it?

  Chambers: I started this story, actually, many years before. I had this whole other life—I was a TV executive in kids TV and then later a documentary filmmaker. When I was still working in teen television, I was lucky enough to be part of an adaptation of a Jacqueline Woodson book called Miracle’s Boys. We became friends, and she had a bunch of other friends in her life who, like me, had creative careers where they were helping other writers tell stories, but they were neglecting their own stories. My whole life, writing was the first thing that I ever wanted to do. I just never gave myself permission. She created this writers group for her friends who all were not tending to their writing. She was like, You all are going to tell your stories. And we’re going to hold each other accountable. That’s when I first I gave myself permission to think of myself as a writer, when I first developed a writing practice. It was my first writing community. The seeds of Diamond were planted then, all thanks to Jackie. Then years later, the actual writing of the book began in grad school. Grad school was the best gift that I’ve ever given myself. Not everyone needs it, but I did. I needed the discipline and the structure and the community. It’s where I developed my craft in a way that I wasn’t able to do on my own. That was, what, 11 years ago?

  Hana Kim: Yes, eleven years ago.

  Chambers: It took me almost nine years to finish.

  swift river cover

  Hana Kim: Back in grad school, I knew that Diamond was special. Her voice was so specific and unique. One thing that I realized when reading Swift River now is that there are three interwoven parts—Diamond’s narrative in 1987, letters from her Auntie Lena in 1987, and found letters from her great aunt Clara in 1915, through which we learn about the history of Diamond’s hometown. How did you decide on this structure?

  Chambers: Those other two layers didn’t come until much later. There is the frame story, which is about Diamond in this one very fraught summer. There are a couple central questions. What really happened to her dad? She wants to leave, wants to learn how to drive. So will she leave? Will she stay? But I knew that there needed to be other layers, an emotional journey. At the start, the only family she has is her mother, and she has very little understanding of her father’s family history. I knew that I wanted to find a way to give her roots and give her more connection. Letters felt like a great way for there to be story movement, for there to be conversations across generations, while still maintaining that sense of isolation for Diamond and her mother. A letter allowed for all of these seeds to be planted and then show up as ripples in Diamond’s life as she was impacted by what she was learning. I also got to tell two other completely separate stories. Auntie Lena and Clara both had their own stories.

  Hana Kim: I love epistolary novels, so I was excited. Though we get to read Auntie Lena’s letters to Diamond, we don’t get to see Diamond’s letters back to Lena. Did you ever write those letters?

  Chambers: I love this question so much, and I’ve never actually been asked this before. I did write letters, actually. They were exercises only. I didn’t want to weigh the book down with more letters back and forth, but there was so much happening to Diamond in in her present and her past. I wanted to understand how this newfound discovery of Lena was changing the way that Diamond felt about herself. The exercises were almost a way of working through what that meant to her. I wrote letters to both Lena and Clara because this is a 16 year old girl, and it’s a moment in life where you’re experiencing all these things in this very big way. You know, emotionally, everything feels like the beginning and the end of the world, but you don’t really have an emotional language for it yet. I wanted to work through what Diamond was feeling so that I could then sprinkle it into her life and the reader could see how she was changing, but to do it in subtle ways.

  Hana Kim: I love when writers create that foundation. I love doing the work that doesn’t get into the book, but informs the book. I could see how intentional you were, in everything from character to structure, and how you move the reader from one section to the next. For example, we move from a scene where Diamond is at a party to a letter about a party that Clara attends. There are these parallels and reveals throughout the book. How do you organize or think about structure?

  Chambers: I really have to give credit to my agent, Julie Barer, and my editor, Carina Guiterman. I knew that the book needed to be ordered in a way that it felt like we were being propelled in one direction, not back and forth in time, so that we were going wide and deep. I thought a lot about what I wanted readers to feel from one place to the next. Julie and Carina were instrumental in figuring out how—particularly with the beginning, when to introduce the first letter from Lena. At what point does the book announce itself to be a book that has letters in it? My organizing principle was: What do I want the readers to feel and know at each moment?

  Hana Kim: One thing we learn through Clara’s section is about how Diamond’s hometown was a sundown town. What was the research process like for you? Did you always know that that was going to be an element in the book?

  Chambers: I had no idea. It is one of those great examples of where research led me to the thing that really cracked the book open. I wanted to root the father in his own history, and I went looking to see: Would there have been Black communities in New England at the turn of the century? I didn’t want him to be a transplant. I wanted him to have roots there. I really wasn’t finding much. Then I discovered this book called Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by Dr. James W. Loewen. As far as I know, it’s the only book written on the history of sundown towns. There are sundown towns in literature and movies, and I thought I understood what they were, which is there are these all-white towns by design, whether that’s by laws and ordinances or violence and terrorism. I understood them to be a Southern thing, and I was shocked to discover that it is primarily a Northern thing. They are mostly in the North, in the Midwest, in the Northwest, in part in response to the Great Migration. Thousands of these towns were formed, between 1890 and the 1960s. As I was reading, one part jumped out at me, which is that sometimes, a person of color is allowed to live in an otherwise only-white town if they were domestic or serving some kind of essential function to the white community. I thought, what if I make Diamond a descendant of this person that was allowed to stay behind? That is how Clara was born. That felt like such a rich opportunity to tell these two very different stories about what it’s like to be the only one.

  Hana Kim: The novel deals with a lot of difficult topics. At the same time, Diamond is such a funny, wry character. I also think that her mom is funny, too. Did you intentionally want to infuse the novel with humor, or are you naturally a funny writer?

  Chambers: There are two Post-its on my computer at all times: “Tell the truth” and “Make yourself laugh.” The humor was intentional not because I wanted to soften what was heavy. I don’t want people to look away. I want them to see. But I do think that I’m very drawn to dark and funny. Life is tragicomic, the way that we experience life with joy and pain sitting so close together. I wanted Diamond to embody that. It also comes from, my background in film and television. You want to move people through these scenes in a way that feels compelling. Humor is part of what makes a character compelling to me.

  As I was creating Diamond’s voice, she came to life in the specifics, and the specifics were always funny to me. I think that that’s where so much of comedy comes from—really specific details and choices. That’s almost always how I would look at a scene: Well, how is this going to be funny? But I wanted to be careful not to make her the fat funny girl. She’s so smart and emotionally intelligent. I wanted humor to be a part of her filter, not just an avoidance tactic. I tried to have there be comedic relief in other ways too. Sometimes we’re laughing at characters, sometimes we’re laughing with them. I knew that white people couldn’t be cartoon characters, even though they are incredibly ignorant in many scenes. I wanted to make sure that all the laughs weren’t coming at their expense, because then I would miss out on the nuance in the way that we actually experience white people who are ignorant.

  Hana Kim: In the beginning, you talked about Diamond as a rootless character, and something we discover along with her is her figuring out her lineage. How do you decide what’s left out of the narrative?

  Chambers: I’m usually guilty of leaving too much out. One of the most rewarding parts of the editing process was trusting my agent and my editor about where to be a bit more obvious. It’s always about figuring out what is the filter. What would Diamond understand, and if she didn’t fully understand, what would she see? How could what she sees help the reader get the subtext?

  Hana Kim: What you’re talking about is recalling such a powerful scene towards the end, with Diamond and her mom and her dad after a disastrous barbecue. You captured Diamond’s confusion, layering in young Diamond’s understanding of what was going on with her family.

  Chambers: I really appreciate that. I write with a couple of books with me at all times, and If You Leave Me is one of them.

  Hana Kim: Wow, I’m honored. In the last chapter, Diamond speaks directly to her mom. This moved me incredibly. I’m always so interested in endings. They’re usually my favorite parts to write. When did this last section come to you?

  Chambers: I also loved writing this ending. I dreaded it until I knew how it was going to end. This is a mother and daughter story in so many ways, and Diamond and her mother spend a lot of time in their pain, in grief, not looking or speaking directly about the horror that they went through. They both are mourning so differently, and they don’t really talk about it. So I knew in the end, Diamond had to tell the truth in a way that she’d never done before. She’s a character that’s so honest and emotionally intelligent. Part of her growth from beginning to the end is bridging that gap between what she knows and what she says, and how to deliver a truth to someone. Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous took my breath away. That was what inspired me to have Diamond speaking directly to her mother in a sort of letter. I wanted it to seem like it could have been something that Diamond said to her mom, or not. The reader won’t know either way, but it has the texture of feeling free enough to say the truth because you may or may not send it.

  Hana Kim: This is a novel about grief, mothers and daughter, lost fathers, the heavy toll of racism, lineage, the body. It’s a coming-of-age story and a historical novel woven together. There’s so much to hold onto. What do you hope readers will take away from the novel?

  Chambers: I’m going to give you two answers. I think with Diamond, she is at the intersection of all these different ways of being “other.” Whether or not you are Diamond or you are a person that is staring at Diamond as she walks by, she’s often a person who’s not humanized. If you’re Diamond, I want you to feel empathy for yourself. If you’re not Diamond, I want you to feel empathy for Diamond and see her. More broadly, I hope that readers think about their own families, their roots, what they inherit from their parents and from history. What we carry around and what we have to let go of in order to kind of become who we’re supposed to be in the world.

  ***

  Essie Chambers is an award-winning writer and producer. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and has received fellowships from the MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, and Baldwin for the Arts. She previously held senior creative executive positions at ViacomCBS (Paramount), and was a producer on the documentary Descendant, which was released by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground and Netflix in 2022. Swift River is her debut novel.

After her father vanishes when she is 9 years old, Diamond Newberry is the only remaining Black person in her small New England mill town, left with her increasingly despondent White mother. She is so isolated that when her Aunt Lena first contacts her seven years later, Diamond has to picture her as Thelma Evans, the cool older sister from the sitcom âGood Times,â just to imagine what a Black woman might look like.

In Essie Chambers's absorbing coming-of-age novel, âSwift River,â mostly set during the summer when Diamond is 16, the fictional Evans family and other Black folks who appeared in 1970s Norman Lear-produced TV shows are the only Black or Brown people Diamond has ever âknownâ; apart from her father, the only images of Blackness she can conjure. When the idea of Aunt Lena as Thelma doesn't stick, Diamond envisions Louise âWeezyâ Jefferson.

This merging of sitcoms, sadness and generational trauma is emblematic of how Chambers weaves irony and gut-punch emotion throughout this gorgeous debut. With the smart and curious Diamond at its vibrant center, âSwift Riverâ has a real sense of humor. Absurdity and loss sit side by side in her mental gymnastics. Her pain can be crushing, but she is defiant. When she looks up her father in a pay phone's public directory (it's 1987), she sees that he is still listed and that someone has scribbled what they thought was an epithet next to his name. The vandal spelled the most infamous word in American history wrong, scribbling âNIGER,â and prompting Diamond to âpull a pen out of my purse and finish the sentence: - The third longest river in Africa!â Many moments are like this, tense and unexpectedly, irreverently wry.

Diamond feels like there's something wrong with her, that she's too much, but the truth is she's just too much for her small town - too big, too brown and too bright, âlit with a shine like armor.â And her feelings and doubts are too big to be soothed by sitcom characters. When she gets the letter from Lena, a relative she's never known of, questions start flying, âcircling around her face like a bunch of angry villagersâ: âWhy didn't you show up for the wedding? Do you know what really happened to my dad? What's your problem with my mom? Where have you been all this time?â Above all: âWhy didn't you help us?â

In 1987, Diamond's father has been gone seven years and long presumed dead. Legally, though, Robert Newberry is just missing, leaving his wife and child in a precarious position. He had life insurance, but his uncertain fate has the family in limbo, unable to cash it. More than strained finances, though, her and her mother's isolation weighs heaviest on Diamond.

The book brims with gemlike sentences, striking imagery, metaphors and juxtapositions. One symbolic and evocative tableau appears on the first page - âmy Pop's sneakers: worn-out and mud-caked from gardening, neatly positioned on the riverbank where the grass meets the sandâ - and then returns later in the novel, as an image from a news story about her father that Diamond can't forget:

âThe newspaper sneakers haunt me. They're just regular old Pro Keds from The Shoe Barn, but they look like lone, stunned witnesses to a crime. They should belong only to Pop, to us; something private turned inside out.â

Diamond clings to those remnants of her father like treasure - his wallet âtucked under a sneaker tongueâ containing âtwo dollars, his license, a packet of snapdragon seeds for the garden, a grocery list from Ma, and my school picture.â Diamond had devoured the seeds, maybe hoping to make those parts of him a part of her - âswallowed the whole envelope ⦠hoping a real dragon would sprout up inside me, fire blossoming from my belly.â

âSwift Riverâ shimmers and shines with acute observations and carefully crafted lines like these. It's easy to get lost in the artistry and sheer volume of those mental images and similes; like poetry, they take time to process. But the novel's core is Diamond's emotional journey. Like those seeds she consumes, her yearning is a living thing. Her mother has challenges that cause Diamond to hide even the most natural desires; she forges friendships away from her mother's watch, even learns to drive in secret. Her âone friend-like person: Fat Bettyâ is a librarian who has taken her under her wing. Though now half her former self, in their small town medium-size Betty remains âFat Bettyâ in perpetuity. For Diamond, facing similar hurdles, Betty is a lifeline, âlike a wise person from the future, come to tell me things I'll need to know, give me things I'll need to fight my way out of here. âHere' being this town and my body.â

Diamond's correspondence with her Aunt Lena about long-buried family secrets and mysteries gives the story added momentum and context. After her mother's death, Lena uses a trove of family letters to help her niece understand the good and bad of where she came from. The Newberrys, her father's ancestors, once ran the town's textile mill. But in Lena's lifetime, âhating that town is like inheriting your granddaddy's eyes,â Lena writes to her. âIt's in the Newberry DNA.â The first letter is dated âover a year after The Leaving. That's what they call the night all the Black people left Swift River,â and when Swift River became a sundown town.

For Diamond, Lena's box of keepsakes and the family history provide essential pieces of herself and her dad. The knowledge makes her braver. Without the Newberrys, Diamond had been, as her father feared, more than a bit âlost.â And yet, even looking at a photo of her father and mother on their wedding day, it had ânever occurred to me to ask Ma, Where are all the people? The friends? The bridesmaids in ugly dresses?â Her parents' lonely wedding day had somehow closed off inquiry: âSomething about the photo makes me feel queasy and embarrassed, and I have to look away. They seem so alone together. At the beginning of so much alone together.â

There and throughout âSwift River,â the story and Chambers's telling of it are a seamless fit, deceptively naturalistic and lyrical rather than showy. Chambers has produced a rare and rewarding thing: a fast-moving novel that you want to slow down and savor.

- - -

Carole V. Bell is a Jamaican-born critic and communication researcher exploring media, culture and politics.

- - -

Swift River

By Essie Chambers

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The Washington Post
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Bell, Carole V. "âSwift River,' a sparkling debut about a young girl you'll never forget." Washington Post, 7 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A796793896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2cf6f615. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Swift River

Essie Chambers. Simon & Schuster, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-6680-2791-2

In Chambers's assured debut, a Black girl comes of age in a predominantly white New England town in 1987. It's the summer before Diamond Newberry's junior year of high school, and she and her Irish American mother, Annabelle, have been struggling to make ends meet since her father, Robert, disappeared seven years ago, when only his shoes and wallet were found on the side of the river. Knowing Annabelle would disapprove, Diamond secretly works at a motel to save money for driving lessons. After she befriends fellow student Shelly Ostrowski, the two make plans to move to Florida together following graduation. Diamond's desire to start a new life is fueled partly by her mother's continued struggle to obtain a death certificate for Robert, which they need for the life insurance benefit, and by Annabelle's hurtful scrutiny. While plotting to leave, Diamond also exchanges letters with her father's cousin Clara, who raised him. From Clara, Diamond learns more about the Black side of her family, and why they moved to Canada. Tension mounts as Diamond struggles to find a way forward and her bond with Annabelle stretches to its breaking point. Adding to the story's depth are complex characterizations and intriguing epistolary interjections from Clara. This sings. Agent: Julie Barer, Book Group. (June)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Swift River." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 14, 8 Apr. 2024, p. 45. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799269896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b598bcf2. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Swift River. By Essie Chambers. June 2024. 304p. Simon & Schuster, $27.99 (9781668027912).

During the summer of 1987, 16-year-old Diamond is the only Black person in the declining mill town of Swift River since her father's shoes and wallet were found on the riverbank seven years ago. She and her white mother, Anna, have lived at the edge of poverty ever since, hitchhiking and taking low-wage jobs until enough time has passed that he can be declared legally dead. As the date approaches, Anna spins tales about what they'll do with his life insurance payout, unaware that Diamond is planning for a different future; she's secretly taking driver's ed classes and planning to run away to Florida with a new friend. She has also begun corresponding with her father's cousin Lena, from whom she learns about her father's family in Georgia and the circumstances surrounding the Leaving, when almost the entire Black population of Swift River left town on a single evening in response to increasingly hostile racial attitudes. Chambers interweaves Diamond's first-person narration with flashbacks to the events leading up to her father's disappearance, Lena's letters, and letters from Aunt Clara, the lone Black resident to remain in Swift River. Insightful, moving, and wryly funny, Chambers' debut is sure to be a bookclub favorite.--Lindsay Harmon

YA: Teens will relate to Diamond's struggles with body image and desire for independence. LH.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
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Harmon, Lindsay. "Swift River." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 18, 18 May 2024, p. 17. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804017411/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e17b652d. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Chambers, Essie SWIFT RIVER Simon & Schuster (Fiction None) $27.99 6, 4 ISBN: 9781668027912

A biracial teenager longs for a different future as she faces her family's past and the buried secrets of her hometown.

"When you have a terrible thing happen that everyone knows about," 16-year-old Diamond Newberry tells us, "you can be laid out flat by anyone." It's 1987 and she's stuck in Swift River, a decaying New England mill town, laid out flat by just about everyone. At nearly 300 pounds and the only person of color in town, Diamond has been lonely most of her life. The "terrible thing" that hangs over her is her father Rob's mysterious disappearance in 1980. Rob, who is Black, had been the subject of police scrutiny in the time just before his sneakers were found by the riverside, and Diamond struggles to separate rumors of his fate from fact. Since seven years have passed, Diamond's mother, Annabelle, who is white, tries to get Rob declared legally dead in order to receive desperately needed life insurance money. But when a letter for Diamond arrives from Rob's cousin, Diamond realizes how disconnected she's felt from her father's family and her "people," having grown up hearing whispers about a single night in the early 20th century known as "The Leaving," when all the Black mill workers planned to flee Swift River en masse. Chambers toggles between 1980 and 1987, while also immersing readers, via family letters, in Swift River Valley circa 1915, to tell a coming-of-age story that shows that our entry into adulthood carries with it all the weight of our family history and that of the places we come from. Despite a somewhat inelegant handling of Diamond's weight, this novel's assured plotting and emotional resonance should render it a breakout book.

Call your book club: This symphonic debut is your next read.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Chambers, Essie: SWIFT RIVER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A791876907/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bdafda40. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Swift River.

By Essie Chambers. Read by a full cast.

2024. 10.5ht Simon & Schuster Audio, DD

(9781797174563).

Three seasoned narrators distinctly inhabit Chambers' empowering debut, already a "Read with Jenna" bestseller. Shayna Small lyrically commands the novel's majority, empathically embodying 16-year-old Diamond Newberry, who in 1987 is the last person of color in the decaying New England town of Swift River. She lives with her white mother, caught in a liminal state after Diamond's Black father disappeared in 1980, leaving his sneakers along the riverbank. For seven years, mother and daughter have subsisted on odd jobs while relying on the (worn-out) kindness of not friends "so much as people who do us favors." Soon enough, Pop can legally be declared dead, allowing Ma to claim the life insurance money. Despite being missing, Pop's presence unexpectedly expands when Diamond begins to receive letters from Aunt Lena--nurturingly enhanced by Janina Edwards--who reconnects Diamond to her Black family history. Among the gifts Lena shares are Aunt Clara's missives dating back to 1915. Robin Miles memorably ciphers Aunt Clara--her jubilation, her disappointments-as she illuminates a legacy of accomplishment, sacrifice, and resilience. Finding family propels young Diamond forward.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Hong, Terry. "Swift River." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 22, Aug. 2024, p. 82. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A808396914/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=63f9dbad. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

Bell, Carole V. "âSwift River,' a sparkling debut about a young girl you'll never forget." Washington Post, 7 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A796793896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2cf6f615. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. "Swift River." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 14, 8 Apr. 2024, p. 45. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799269896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b598bcf2. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. Harmon, Lindsay. "Swift River." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 18, 18 May 2024, p. 17. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804017411/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e17b652d. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. "Chambers, Essie: SWIFT RIVER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A791876907/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bdafda40. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. Hong, Terry. "Swift River." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 22, Aug. 2024, p. 82. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A808396914/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=63f9dbad. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.

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