Hannah Richell on following the flow in her new novel

Hannah Richell was born in Kent and spent her childhood years in Buckinghamshire and Canada. After graduating from the University of Nottingham she worked in the book publishing and film industries in both London and Sydney. She is a dual citizen of Great Britain and Australia and currently lives the South West of England with her family. Hannah is the author of international bestsellers Secrets of the Tides, The Shadow Year and The Peacock Summer. Her books have been translated into fourteen languages.

Today, Hannah’s on the blog to talk about her new novel, The River Home. Read on …

Hannah Richell

I know the world is a scary and unpredictable place right now, but if you are here on the Booktopia site looking for a read that will whisk you away from your current reality, to a beautiful riverside setting in England, and characters who will take you on a journey into heartbreak and healing, I hope you might consider The River Home. It is my pleasure to be able to share it with you.

In my new book, I drop the reader into one tense week with the loving but somewhat dysfunctional Sorrell family, who are reuniting for the last-minute wedding of their middle daughter, Lucy. Drawn back to the family home, Windfalls, on the banks of the River Avon in Somerset, the family must pull together for a big family day, while facing the pain and secrets hidden in their past that have kept them distanced until now. It’s a story about families, about loving and living, and about learning to let go and heal.

The inspiration for The River Home came from my own life experiences. That’s not to say that I have directly experienced the events my characters go through, but I have loved and lost, I have felt deep pain and grief and I wanted to show, through the story, something that I learned the hard way: that learning to live with the most painful chapters of our lives, while challenging, can often help to illuminate and enhance the more beautiful ones too. It seemed right to offset the more painful revelations in the novel with a big, beautiful (if slightly chaotic) wedding because these are characters who, while facing pain and sadness, are fundamentally tied by deep bonds of love.

Windfalls and the village it sits within are both fictional places drawn from my imagination, but they are inspired by areas I know and love well in rural Somerset. Walking beside the River Avon certainly helped to shape and inspire the novel. The river is a central motif to the novel, both physically and metaphorically. It represents different things to different characters, joy, freedom, pain, shame. Ultimately it reinforces a central message: that no matter what we face in life, life goes on, a constant, relentless flow that we must embrace.

Stay well and keep reading.

–Hannah Richell

The River Home by Hannah Richell (Hachette Books Australia) is out now.

The River Home

by Hannah Richell

Margot Sorrell didn't want to go home. She had spent all her adult life trying not to look behind. But a text from her sister Lucy brought her back to Somerset. 'I need you.'

As Margot, Lucy and their eldest sister, Eve, reunite in the house they grew up in beside the river, the secrets they keep from each other, and from themselves, refuse to stay hidden. A wedding brings them together but long-simmering resentments threaten to tear the family apart. No one could imagine the way this gathering would change them all...

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