As a River

By Sion Dayson
Jaded Ibis Press, 2019, 218 pages

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In her reflective and lyrical début novel, As a River, Sion Dayson explores the hazards of secrets. Whether kept or revealed, they can exact a profound toll: on those who carry them and on those who either remain in the dark or are made to confront new–and potentially life-changing–truths. With deep feeling, Dayson traces these consequences across lives and generations, portraying how those affected cope–sometimes by strengthening old bonds or forming new ones.

At the center of the novel is Greer Michaels, an African American man who has returned to the small, segregated town of Bannen, Georgia, to take care of his ailing mother, Elizabeth. Long an intellectually curious dreamer, Greer fled Bannen at the age of sixteen and traveled the world. But as the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that Greer’s decision to leave Bannen was driven by far more than wanderlust.

Back in Bannen, Greer finds that little has changed, including his mother, a reserved woman with whom he’d long had a fraught and distanced relationship. Early in his return to town, Greer reflects, “Even after all these years, she still had little to say.”

At the heart of the rift between mother and son is a secret that Elizabeth had kept from Greer for years, thinking she was protecting him. Not wanting to reveal too much, I’ll just say that Greer’s discovery of the secret, when he was sixteen, upended his notions of who he was and how he’d come into the world. It also drove him to cross the potentially dangerous divide between black and white Bannen, and into hazards his mother had hoped to keep him from.

Further complicating matters, teenaged Greer fell in love with a white woman, Caroline, whom he’d saved from drowning in a local river. “You saved my life,” Caroline remarked at the time. “Now we’re bound forever.” The two planned to escape Bannen together and see the world, until Greer discovered something about her that destroyed his sense of their relationship and widened the breach between himself and his mother. This crisis prompted Greer to run away from Bannen, and Caroline, with no apparent plan to return–until he learns of his mother’s sickness, sixteen years later.

Offering some relief from the estrangement Greer feels upon returning to Bannen is Ceiley, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a neighbor, Esse. As the two of them get to know each other, Greer discovers that Ceiley, like himself, is a dreamer and book lover who is also frustrated with her mother. In particular, she is frustrated with the seeming unwillingness of Esse to discuss anything personal, anything from the past. (As it turns out, Esse has secrets of her own.)

Also like Greer, Ceiley wishes to escape Bannen and explore the wider world, leading her to run away. But she doesn’t get far, thanks to Greer, who goes off in search of her. In speaking with Ceiley about her desire to escape, Greer might as well be speaking to himself: “You leave this town because you’re angry, leave with unsettled business–believe me, you’ll never really escape it.” He continues:

As if taking his own advice, Greer sets off to face the unsettled business of what happened to Caroline after he fled Bannen. When a bit of detective work leads him to her mother, he uncovers more painful truths. Later, Greer reflects, People had been hurt in his wake. Did it make any difference that he’d never intended any harm?

In these and other observations by Greer, Dayson writes insightfully about the consequences of kept or revealed secrets, and of what is known or unknown by any given character. And she explores how this knowledge–or lack of it–shapes characters’ perceptions of themselves and others. In this especially moving passage, Greer makes a telling observation about his relationship with Caroline:

Upon returning from his mission to find Caroline, Greer becomes more focused on his increasingly frail mother. Convincing her to go to the hospital, he says, “You’re the only family I got.”

As Elizabeth’s ties to the world loosen, she opens up to Greer (and to readers) more than she ever had, revealing much that she and her son have in common: ill-fated love discovered by Bannen’s river, a desire to run off with the lover and see the world, and shared histories of tragedy, guilt, and loss. Because Dayson, over the course of the novel, has gradually brought to life everything that connects Greer to Bannen, and ultimately to his mother, the shift in Greer and Elizabeth’s relationship feels both revelatory and natural.

Also, by vividly portraying Greer’s strengthening connections to Ceiley–and eventually to Ceiley’s mother–Dayson shows the ways in which friendships and community bonds can sustain us, even (or perhaps especially) when we feel most inclined to withdraw into ourselves.

Finally, I must mention Dayson’s masterful writing about the river that runs not only through Bannen but through the novel itself, connecting storylines–and loves and losses–across time. The river feels as fully realized as the novel’s richly drawn characters, and at certain moments it transcends them–like time itself.