Let the River Stand by Vincent O'Sullivan

Quiet rural lives conceal powerful and troubling connections

Good Condition - Minor cover wear and creasing, with tanned page edges. Otherwise pages are clean and tidy.

In the Waikato of the 1930s and 1940s, seemingly ordinary lives become linked through family obligations, attraction and violence. Alex moves through this world as a solitary presence, his relationships with Barbara and Bet forming part of a larger pattern of devotion, hidden desires and unsettled loyalties. Farming and boxing belong to the familiar landscape, while events reaching as far as Tasmania and the Spanish Civil War draw that local world into wider history. Vincent O'Sullivan's novel follows connections that are not always visible to the people caught within them. Moving between affection and tragedy, it explores how private lives carry extraordinary pressures beneath an outward appearance of routine, and how love endures alongside darker impulses.