River People

River People is a novel of inspiration, love, loss, and renewal.

In Nebraska in the late 1890s, seventeen-year-old Effie and eleven-year-old Bridget must struggle to endure at a time when women and children have few rights, and society looks upon domestic abuse as a private, family matter.

From different parts of the country the two girls, unrelated, are thrown together under unusual life changing events and they must learn to live under conditions you would consider inhumane and unbearable, to survive.

The story is set on a banks of the Missouri River in Nebraska and told through the eyes of the girls as they must struggle to endure abuse and neglect at the hands of a man whose past has left deep scars and a cruel, warped view of family and religion.

Living under grueling circumstances, it’s a testament to the human spirit, and what we can all endure and accomplish.

Review by -Rebecca Rotert, author of “All the Animals We Ever Were”

“In this big, ambitious novel, Lukas renders the changing world of the Midwest in the late 19th century, a world as brutal as it is beautiful. The players on its stage are admiringly human and deeply flawed. In clean, beautiful prose, and an unflinching eye, Lukas illuminates the way in which the relentless work of survival both builds and destroys kinship and community, Threaded through, as constant as the Missouri River at the physical center of this story, is a desire for belonging that flourishes in the unexpected.”