Artifacts of their ambition. Only through study of those things could you truly understand people long departed…. The reality of someone’s heart lay in the objects of their desires. Whether those things were achieved did not matter nearly so much as what they had been.
Eric Shaw, hero of Michael Koryta’s So Cold the River, is a failure in life. That’s his view of himself, and he confirms it constantly by self-sabotaging. He was a rising cinematographer in Hollywood, until he lost his temper and made himself radioactive in the industry. Now he’s home in Chicago, subsisting through making memorial films for funerals. He recently succeeded in driving his wife away too.
A wealthy woman, impressed with one of his films, offers him a well-paying project. She’d like him to go down to Indiana to research the early life of her father-in-law’s father, a very rich man who was always secretive about his origins. It’s supposed to be a gift.
Eric goes down to the area of French Lick, Indiana, where he finds two towns, each with surprisingly lavish old hotels, relics of the 1920s, when the area was a popular location for spas. It was famous for its mineral water, which connects to the only artifact Eric’s client was able to offer him as a clue to the old man’s story – a bottle of cloudy water, bottled back in the glory days.
Eric makes one major mistake. As an experiment, he drinks some of the old water to treat a headache. First it makes him deadly sick. Then he starts seeing vivid visions of the past. Before long, Eric realizes the water is addictive – and he only has a limited supply.
Meanwhile, an elderly widow in the area is watching the sky. She’s been a weather tracker for many years, and she can tell a very unusual storm system is approaching.
I feel I’m doing a bad job describing how very well So Cold the River works. It reminded me (if I may be forgiven for the comparison) to my own novel, Wolf Time – though I fear Michael Koryta has done a better job here of constructing an epic urban fantasy/ghost story. (You can even find Christian themes if you like, though I’m not sure they’re intended. I was particularly impressed by the way the story treats one particular, unexpected hero.)
It’s a very cinematic story, and indeed it has been made into a movie – though (surprise, surprise) they gender-swapped most of the main characters.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed So Cold the River very much. I recommend it highly.