About this item
Sixteen-Year-Old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel’s hired boy. It’s a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it’s a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May, 1889. After days of heavy rain, the dam fails, unleashing 20 million tons of water onto Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the valley below. The town where Peter lives with his father. The town where Celestia has just arrived to join him. This searing novel in poems explores a cross-class romance—and a tragic event in U.
About the Author
Jame's interest in history began with reluctance in childhood, when every school vacation involved a family trip in the paneled station wagon to museums, presidential tombs and historical monuments. She bided her time until reaching the gift shop, wondering why she couldn't go to an amusement park or the beach like everyone else. During those long car trips, she learned to write and revise in her head. Twenty years of creative writing (sometimes even on paper) and her knowledge of history come together in Three Rivers Rising, her first novel.Three Rivers Rising is on the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) 2011 list and the School Library Journal Best Books of 2010 list. It is also the 2011 IRA Children's and Young Adult Book Award, Honorable Mention in the Young Adult category.Starred reviews: Kirkus and School Library Journal.Prior to publication, Three Rivers Rising won the PEN New England Children's Book Caucus 2008 Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award.Please visit www.jamerichards.com for more information, including a Reader Guide.
