Book Review: River Walker by Cate Culpepper

Grady Wrenn is a cultural anthropologist teaching an undergraduate summer seminar at a small New Mexico university. Her students want to investigate the local legend of La Llorona, a River Walker. Known locally as Maria, the River Walker haunts the rivers of the world luring abusive men to their deaths in revenge for the deaths of herself and two small sons at the hands of an abusive husband. Grady meet Elena Montalvo, a spiritual healer, one night at the Rio Grande river. Grady has her own demons to live with and walks the banks of the river when her insomnia won’t leave her. When Maria takes the lives of three men in Mesilla, the local men believe that Elena is working in tandem with Maria to find men to feed Maria’s blood lust. Elena enlists Grady to help find a way to end Maria’s raging vendetta. As they move down that path, the two women acknowledge a growing attraction for one another that is consummated after a particularly scary night when the local men want to take their vengeance out on Elena, and Grady must deal with Maria. In the end, Maria reveals her secrets that shock Elena to her core.

If you are like Grady and don't believe in the existence of ghosts or spirits, good or evil, this book will be an eyeopener for you. Culpepper tells her story without preaching and without proselytizing. She imparts information about Elena’s belief system in such a way that you may find yourself wishing you knew a spiritual healer either for yourself or someone you love. You may even begin to believe, just a little, in a spirit world.

You’ll also find yourself reading this book into the wee hours of the morning even though you have to be up early to go to work. You’ll smile at Culpepper’s subtle humor and may even find tears as the women of the men killed by Maria tell their stories.

Culpepper’s writing style can only be described as fluid and soothing. This is a multi-faceted book that will fascinate even the staunchest non-believer. Culpepper is a born story teller, and the reader can imagine her spinning this yarn of ghosts and evil spirits to friends around a campfire.

Converting to eBooks

I am in the process of converting to eBooks. Slowly, I might add, and reluctantly.

My First Kindle

I bought a Kindle when they first came out in 2007. It was a wonderful solution to carrying several books in my carry-on luggage while I was traveling to and from Asia several times a year. When I returned to the US permanently, I went back to reading only print books.

Recently, I was given a new Kindle as a gift. It is very different from the 2007 model - smaller, lighter, and easier to read books on. The downside of the new Kindle is that books are more expensive these days than they were a three years ago.

I went to Amazon looking for a half dozen books to load on to my new toy, but they weren’t available on Kindle. So I won’t be converting totally to reading only eBooks. Yet. I was surprised, though, at what was on Kindle. For instance, I downloaded several free “Scientific American” magazines from the 1800s for research purposes.

No eBooks for Me (or Famous Last Words)

I never thought I’d be one of the people who would convert to reading eBooks. I steadfastly refused to listen to audiobooks when they became available, and, as the technology changed, refused to load books onto my iPhone or my iPod. I love printed books. I love the way they look, the way they feel when you hold them, the little thrill of anticipation I get when I open a print book for the first time, and that whisper when you turn to the title page. I love it all.

The only reason I bought a Kindle in the first place was because I don’t sleep well on planes, even on those long, 15-hour flights to Asia. So the Kindle was a perfect choice then. When I wasn’t on a plane, though, I continued to buy and read print books.

Why Use a Kindle Now?

Recently, I found myself spending way too much time trying to decide which book to take with me to a doctor’s appointment that I knew could run into the three-hour range. With my Kindle, I can throw it into my bag as I leave the house. Voila, I have many books to choose from (although, since I’m already reading a book on the Kindle, there really isn’t a reason to have to choose).

I read while I’m waiting for an appointment, I read while I sit in the Botanical Gardens after I finish my walk, and I read waiting for meetings to start. Wait, you may say, you can carry a paperback in your bag, you can read a paperback in the Gardens, and you can read a paperback while waiting for meetings to start. So why Kindle?

Indeed. Why Kindle? Because when I put a paperback into my bag, it is the only book I can read that day while I go about my business. But throw the Kindle into my bag and, theoretically, I can take 3,500 books with me. I’ll have a choice of which book to read. Of course, choosing which one of 3,500 titles to read will take up the waiting time, but it is the principle of the matter. I'm sure it will take me years to fill my Kindle up and potentially thousands of dollars. But, I tell myself, buying books for the Kindle is still cheaper than buying 3,500 print books.

What’s Most Attractive About the Kindle?

Perhaps, the most attractive thing about reading on the Kindle is that I won’t need to figure out where to put yet another bookcase, I was looking at one of my bookcases the other day and noticed that I have fewer books on it now that I’ve started using my Kindle again. In fact, one shelf is half full of socks. Yes, I have a lot of socks, but that’s a blog for another day.

What Did I Do with My Old Kindle?

I gave my old Kindle to my nephew who steadfastly agreed with me that he, too, would never give up on print books. However, even he now carries his Kindle with him no matter where he goes. Yike! What is the world coming to?

Reading Out Loud

Do you read your manuscript out loud before you submit it to your best friend, family, beta readers, critique group, or agent? No? You should. I can’t tell you how many error I’ve caught in my own manuscripts even after numerous line-by-line revisions, even after numerous other people have read it, even after I thought it was ready to go out the door.

Reading Out Loud

For whatever reason reading your manuscript out loud allows you to not only catch blips in the conversations between your characters, but it also allows you to catch grammatical errors, syntax errors, and even loose ends that haven’t been dealt with or caught by your many readers. More importantly than any of those things, though, is by reading aloud, you will catch misspelled and misused words.

Spellchecker is Not Infallible

Wait, you may say. I ran spellchecker. I caught all the misspelled words. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Let’s say that spellchecker did catch all the misspelled words in your manuscript. It did not catch misused words.

When you read your manuscript out loud, you will catch the misused words, assuming of course, you know how to spell. If you don’t, add that to your list of things you can do to improve your writing. Do not, I repeat, do not rely on spellchecker to catch misused words because it can’t. It is your manuscript and you are responsible for every word in it.

Misused Words

Misused words generally occur in the guise of your brain knowing the word needed, but because of a misfired synapsis, you type a completely different word. The two words may be pronounced similarly. The bottom line, though, is that one is correct and the other is not.

I’ve recently read two books published by big name publishers. Both had misused words. One used the word “bases” when the author meant “basis.” The second used the word “fowl” when “foul” was needed. In the latter case, it resulted in an amusing sentence, i.e., “the fowl weather.” My imagination immediately went to the possibility of chickens raining down from the sky.

Stopping the Reader

If your goal is to stop your reader dead in her tracks and you misuse words, you will have reached your goal. However, if you wrote a book that you want the reader to read into the wee hours of the morning, without pause, then you missed your goal by a mile.

There are so many things that can and will stop a reader from reading any further, at least for a minute or two. In that minute or two, the spell is broken. You and your reader are no longer in sync. If there are too many of these missteps, the reader may set your book aside or throw in the trash.

Isn’t That the Editor’s Job?

It used to be that a good editor would catch every little error you managed to put into your manuscript. Those days, I fear, are long gone. Today, with the publishing world in a turmoil, facing financial troubles, and changing so quickly that many editors have been laid off, I suspect editors are hard pressed to spend the kind of time they need in order to catch every mistake we writers are capable of making.

Do Your Reader a Favor

Do yourself and your readers a service, read the manuscript out loud and catch all those misspelled words, all those loose ends you forgot, and, perhaps most importantly, the misused words.