Author Wally Lamb’s novels are always full of pathos and urgency, broken people and yearning, impossible situations and generosity, flawed characters and the finding of grace in the most unexpected of places. His latest THE RIVER IS WAITING (Simon and Schuster 2025) is a saga that is as heart-wrenching as the movie The Shawshank Redemption, filled with tragedy, humour, love, betrayal and forgiveness.
The protagonist Corby Ledbetter is struggling – he has lost his job, he’s becoming a little too reliant on prescription medication and alcohol to get him through each day, his marriage is stressed and his toddler twins are adorable but also doing his head in (as toddler twins tend to do). Despite all this, things are going ok for Corby, relatively speaking. Until one tragic day when an act of momentary inattention causes a terrible accident that affects the entire family. Grief-stricken Corby cannot forgive himself, so how can he ever hope that his wife Emily or the other members of his family will ever forgive him for what he has done?
The family is further torn apart when Corby is sentenced to a prison sentence, an environment so foreign and ‘other’ to him that he seriously doubts, from day one, whether he will cope. The chapters count down the days that he serves and describe his life on the inside – the abusive prison guards, the antagonistic inmates, the isolation and deprivation, the humiliation, the ever-present threat of fear.
But he also experiences moments of grace, unexpected acts of kindness and generosity, and the friendship of a few individuals who keep him sane – his cellmate, Manny, who offers tender and compassionate advice; the prison librarian who rescues him through literature; and a young man Solomon, only 18, for whom Corby becomes a role model. Despite the gang wars and infighting, the unreasonable, unfair and abusive treatment from those in charge, and the always present need to look over his shoulder for potential trouble, Corby manages to count off the years, months, weeks and then days towards his release.
Throughout his time, he is plagued by doubts about what awaits him on the outside. Emily is distant. She rarely visits and her phone calls leave him wondering whether he will be welcome home at all. He hears nothing from his father, despite the older man paying for his court costs. He feels alone, lonely, isolated and despairing.
As the time passes, and Corby does everything he can towards rehabilitation and recompense, he is not sure if anything can ever be the same as before. His mistake may have cost him more than the obvious – it may have altered his life so that it will never be the same.
Towards the end of the novel, a magnificently shocking, shattering and unexpected twist turns the whole book upside down. It is tragic and heart-breaking, yet Lamb manages to find a resolution which does hold some light, mercy and compassion.
THE RIVER IS WAITING is superbly crafted with a compulsive plot and characters who will break your heart then mend it again. The author spent 20 years as a volunteer facilitator at an American prison and his book is informed by those years of observation and interaction with inmates and guards, and an interrogation of ‘the system’.
Themes include sudden loss, complicated grief, complex guilt, human decency, man’s inhumanity to man, deprivation, friendship, betrayal, hope, forgiveness, the instinct for survival, the siren pull of giving up when all seems lost, and emotional healing. Lamb finds hope in the darkest places and demonstrates through his characters and their situations how affecting and unsentimental true compassion can be.