Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Book Summary and Reviews of The River Knows Your Name by Kelly Mustian

The River Knows Your Name by Kelly Mustian

The River Knows Your Name

A Novel

by Kelly Mustian

  • Publishes:
  • Apr 1, 2025, 432 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

From the acclaimed author of The Girls in the Stilt House comes a long-awaited novel both atmospheric and lyrical, a haunting Southern story about memory, family secrets, and fierce and fragile love.

For nearly thirty years, Nell has kept a childhood promise to never reveal what she and Evie found tucked inside a copy of Jane Eyre in their mother's bookcase―a record of Evie's birth naming a stranger as her mother. But lately, Nell has been haunted by hazy memories of their early life in Mississippi, years their reclusive mother, Hazel, has kept shrouded in secrecy. Evie recalls nothing before their house on Clay Mountain in North Carolina, but Nell remembers abrupt moves, odd accommodations, and the rainy night a man in a dark coat and a hat pulled low climbed their porch steps with a very little girl―Evie―then left without her.

In dual storylines, Nell, forty-two in 1971, reaches into the past to uncover dangerous, long-buried secrets, and Becca, a young mother in the early 1930s, presses ahead, each moving toward 1934, the catastrophic year that would forever link them.

From a windswept ghost town long forgotten, to a river house in notorious Natchez Under-the-Hill, to a moody nightclub stage, Evie's other mother emerges from the shadows of Depression-era Mississippi in a story of hardship and perseverance, of betrayal and trust, and of unexpected redemption in a world in which the lines between heroes and culprits are not always clearly drawn.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"A well-woven story that also plumbs the depths of the human heart, intertwining the power and wildness of the natural world and the risks people take for love. A novel about both running from the past and running after it, The River Knows Your Name woke me up early and kept me up late." ―Ash Davidson, author of Damnation Spring

"With masterful prose, Kelly Mustian weaves together a generational saga that explores the ties that bind and the forces that seek to tear them apart. The River Knows Your Name is a richly atmospheric tapestry of hidden pasts, resilient spirits, and the human heart's proclivity for tenacity and truth." ―Meagan Church, bestselling author of The Girls We Sent Away and The Last Carolina Girl

"The River Knows Your Name is a captivating tale of love, loss and found family set in the lush and wild Mississippi Delta. Mustian's plucky, determined female characters grip your heart. You won't be able to put the book down until the last puzzle piece of their dual-timeline family mystery clicks into place." ―Emily Matchar, author of In the Shadow of the Greenbrier

"Kelly Mustian is a flat-out master storyteller. With a plot as woven and tumultuous as river current, this story is a profoundly human tale simply dripping with will and strength and heart. Mustian's storytelling insists there is magnificence amidst darkness if we only persevere. I am a fan." —Andrew J. Graff, author of True North and Raft of Stars

This information about The River Knows Your Name was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Kelly Mustian

Kelly Mustian is the USA Today bestselling author of The Girls in the Stilt House and The River Knows Your Name. She is the recipient of the Mississippi Library Association's 2023 Author Award for Fiction, and The Girls in the Stilt House was shortlisted for the 2022 Crook's Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American South. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and commercial magazines. Originally from Mississippi, she currently lives in North Carolina.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Wager
    by David Grann
    From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
Who Said...

The less we know, the longer our explanations.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T the L

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.