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If Between Two Rivers, by acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Rinaldi, were a classic martini, it would be served in a properly chilled glass, contain top-shelf gin with a hint of vermouth and be garnished with a succulent olive. Further, it would be sipped in a jazz club overlooking the Hudson on a balmy evening while music flowed with edgy sophistication. In other words, this book offers even more than fine writing and a well-constructed, intriguing tale. It’s a whole experience. Rinaldi skillfully manages a whole cast of eclectic characters living or working in Echo Terrace, a luxury condominium building in lower Manhattan run by the quietly opinionated concierge, Farro Fescu, who has been there “from the start, when the building first opened its doors nine years ago.” Fescu “knows the pace, the tempo, the rhythm, the vibrations in the lobby walls. Without looking up he knows the tap of Ravijohn’s cane, the scent of Maggie Sowle’s cologne, the click of Lena Klongdorf’s heels.” Rinaldi brings these people to life like a modern-day Dickens, creating memorable, well-defined characters such as Nora Abernooth, whose grandfather hunted with Teddy Roosevelt and who shares her apartment, (at the start of the novel things change dramatically) with a menagerie that contains a rhesus monkey, a cobra, a macaw and numerous finches. Rinaldi also craftily makes the Twin Towers rise up with an unsettling presence that foreshadows the Trade Center tragedy to come and brings the whole complicated construct along with the many changes and interactions in the character’s lives to its shattering conclusion. He does all of these things with such finesse, such careful insight into human hopes and hurts, such poetry, that the book almost becomes something to live through, rather than simply read. Despite the inexorable, horrific ending, underlying messages of connection, the beauty of love, and the amazing resilience of the human spirit are woven into the web and render the outcome poignant and uplifting. Perhaps I could say if Between Two Rivers were a martini it would be a classic, but it would leave you shaken and stirred.

Linda Stankard writes from Nanuet, New York.

Readers of Dennis McFarland’s previous novels have marveled at his perceptive handling of varied facets of the human experience, including alcoholism, sexual abuse, aging, death and suicide. His memorable characters confront life’s pitfalls, usually looking back at their formative years imbued with the wisdom of adulthood. McFarland’s fifth novel, Prince Edward, varies from that formula in that the protagonist, Ben Rome, is not an adult but a 10-year-old boy struggling to navigate the complicated waters of the 1959 desegregation crisis in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Ben’s small town confronts the Supreme Court mandate to integrate its public schools by deciding instead to close them, enroll all its white children in private schools, and leave the blacks to fend for themselves.

The author adroitly illuminates all sides of the issue through the characters surrounding Ben, each of whom contributes to his coming of age over the long summer. His father, who is abusive and drunk much of the time, openly supports the ongoing segregation efforts, while his ineffectual mother seems to ignore the issue. His older brother professes to sympathize with the town’s blacks, but his actions say otherwise. Ben thinks his sister supports the town’s black families, including that of Ben’s best friend Burghardt, but she is so absorbed in her own problems that she has little time to discuss civil rights. Black sentiments are embodied by Burghardt and his grandmother, Granny Mays, who live on Ben’s grandfather’s farm; Granny will do anything it takes to see that her grandson gets an education.

McFarland masterfully blends his fictional characters into the real story of how one county actually kept its public schools closed for five years, depriving those blacks who couldn’t relocate of any formal education. Surrounded by a long-standing tradition of prejudice, and without the moral guidepost of an Atticus Finch, Ben gradually begins to understand the wrongs committed in the name of “states’ rights and civic responsibility,” which lie at the heart of this sensitive and compelling novel.