I liked this book about a small town in Minnesota in 1958, after World War II and the Korean War. The town is filled with war veterans and others that have been through trauma. It is bisected by a river that has seen it all. Someone that no one likes is murdered and found dead in the river. All sorts of sorted pasts are examined in the process of getting to the bottom of who is responsible.

Even though there is violence done to women here, and the story is written by a man, the women are much stronger than the usual stereotypes of that time. I could tell it was well written when the book starts out with a police chief doing some very wrong things and I wasn’t made to hate him, only cheer on his progress and hope for his redemption.

If you like a who-done-it that rings more about the people, place, and time than anything else, you might like this book. My book group had a great discussion about it. Unlike the book I reviewed last week that had no plot, this book is a quicker read because it is plot driven, even though you end up with a lot more by the end. There are not too many novels set in the midwest during this time period, which makes The River We Remember all that much more special. I give it four stars.