House on the River: A Summer Journey

One August, Nessa Rapoport rented a houseboat to travel through the blue lakes and stone canals of the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario with her children, mother, and uncle and aunt. At the end of the journey was a small Canadian town called Bobcaygeon, where Rapoport and her mother and uncle had once spent dreamy summers of reading and reverie in an old house on a green river.

Although the purpose of the trip was to show her young children the setting of her summers when she was their age, Nessa Rapoport discovered that all three generations of her family were floating toward an encounter with the past.

Beautifully written and evocative, House on the River explores the power of memory to shape a person’s life, the deep bonds across generations, the reconciliation of mothers and daughters, and the way loss can be distilled into a source of consolation. It is the story of an enchanting journey on water and an inner journey inflected by a vibrant and joyful relationship to family and faith.