River of Light - by Wendy Schultz (Paperback)

About the Book

Ten-year-old Fresno wants to be normal, but that's a hard ask when she can hear the voices of unborn babies. She remakes her life, but a baby in peril may leave that new life forever altered.

Book Synopsis

If you had an ability that could save lives but that would target you as different, would you use it? If the price of living a normal life was ignoring part of yourself, would you pay that price?

Ten-year-old Fresno Bakersfield Ingersoll really wants a normal life. It's a hard ask when she's saddled with a horrible name, an absent father, and a flaky mother who moves her family every year. And then there's her own forbidden ability to hear the voices of unborn babies. Resolutely, Fresno changes her name, moves in with her stable grandmother and does her best to block the songs of the babies.

Years pass. Fresno is now Clare and living the normal life she has created. Then her father resurfaces and her mother shares traumatic experiences with her, shaking Clare's world. When her long-hidden baby radar is needed to save the life of her college roommate's baby, Clare's normal life may vanish forever.

Review Quotes

"From the time she is a small child, Fresno has an unusual gift: she can talk to babies in the womb. But her complicated family and fear of being different repress her talents-until an urgent need invites her to own her powers. River of Light honors the power of intuition, respects the wisdom and resilience of children (especially those born into difficult circumstances), and offers the possibility of intergenerational healing. The story is an original, charming, memorable page-turner, which will leave you feeling tender-hearted and full of hope."

-Tarn Wilson is the author The Slow Farm, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, and 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Your Creativity and Inspire You to Write

"Author Wendy Schultz deftly tells her new novel, River of Life, with great heart, tender humor and warm optimism. At the beginning, Clare, the 10-year-old spunky protagonist, lobbies a judge to change her name from Fresno Bakersfield to Clare Elizabeth in her drive to be normal. One problem: she definitely isn't. Schultz draws her cast of Clare, her family, her antagonists and her friends with such empathy, you'll be rooting for all of them - even when they're working at cross purposes. I found myself thinking of these characters as if they were members of my own family and disappointed to remember they weren't. By book's end, when college student Clare wonders whether her extraordinary gift, one that scares other people, could be something she could build a career on, you may find yourself cheering her on with a rousing, YES! I did."

-Jan Stites is the author of Reading the Sweet Oak and Edgewise

"An enchanting story of family secrets and redemption and a girl who hides a mystical power that can pull them all together...

River of Light is the beautiful and extraordinary story of Clare, a girl born with a unique gift she keeps hidden from the world most of her young life. It is powerful enough to bring vision, life, and redemption to those around her, but the ones she loves most have always suppressed her mystic power. Now that she is afraid to use it openly, her challenge will be finding the inner strength to summon it for the ones in most need of it despite the condemnation, because if she can be completely open, without keeping anything back, this wonderful gift might bring her torn family back together, and it just might save her best friend's unborn child."

-Tim Reaume, author of Jade Jaguar, Reclaiming the Void, Burning, Post Office, and the book of poetry House at the End of the Road.