Once Upon a River – Dianne Setterfield

 The river is the Thames, specifically between Cricklade and Oxford. Midway down that stretch is the Swan Inn where on midwinter’s eve the regulars – the bargemen, the gravel-diggers, and the cress-growers – gather to tell and listen to stories in the days when entertainment had to be self-generated.

The gathering is rudely interrupted when a man, battered and bloodied, bursts in, dripping wet, with a similarly drenched, unconscious child in his arms When he then collapses, the local freelance nurse, Rita Sunday, is sent for. The man’s identity is revealed by a business card his sodden wallet. He is Henry Daunt, pioneering photographer. As he remains unconscious, and the child says nothing, her identity is open to speculation.

It could be Daunt’s daughter. But she is of an age consistent with a baby girl snatched from the big house two years earlier. Within a day another candidate emerges. A destitute abandoned mother has hung herself and her daughter, last seen being held on a bridge over the river, is missing. Then a crazed woman turns up claiming the child is her sister.

Though Daunt recovers and confirms it is not his child, that still leaves three rival claims. Anthony Vaughan, from the big house, needs to believe it is his snatched daughter, Amelia; Robert Armstrong, father-in-law of the suicide, hopes it is his never-seen grandchild, Alice; and crazed Lily White is convinced it is her sister, Ann, drowned twenty years since, finally given back up by the river.

The good guys, Rita Sunday, Henry Daunt, Robert Armstrong, and Anthony Vaughan band together to determine the truth. In doing so, dark deeds are uncovered. For those who witness life and death by river, the supernatural cannot be discounted.

The light gothic style flows as well as the river that forms the dramatic, ever-present backdrop. The main characters have a surprising depth to them, which sees them struggle not so much with physical foes as with conflicting emotions. Some, at least, will have hopes dashed, but hopefully all will get closure.