Tis the Season for The Rivers Trilogy

 

Joan Schweighardt celebrated the one-year anniversary of the completion of her Rivers Trilogy.

You can purchase the three books individually, beginning with Before We Died here,

Or you can buy all three at once in a Kindle boxed set here.

 

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The people of Manaus, Brazil, where much of the Rivers Trilogy takes place, are poor, but they knew how to party. Their drink of preference is Caipirinha, which is made with cachaça, a Brazilian spirit extracted from sugarcane juice. Here’s the recipe:

 

·       Lots of limes, halved and squeezed by hand

·       Lots of white sugar

·       Lots of cachaça

·       Ice

·       Put it all in an oversized jar and shake well.

 

When the characters in the trilogy are not in Brazil, they are in New York—during Prohibition! One of them finds work in a speakeasy. Bootleggers thought nothing of selling watered-down whiskey—or even moonshine or industrial alcohol mixed with fruit juices or Coca-Cola to disguise the taste. Some of that stuff could kill you! Really! If you wanted to stay safe, you asked for Dewar’s.

 

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The Rivers Trilogy includes the novels Before We Died, Gifts for the Dead and River Aria. All three books work as standalone novels, but to sum them up collectively, In 1908, two Irish American brothers leave their jobs on the Hudson River docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, to seek their fortunes tapping rubber trees in the Brazilian rainforest. They expect to encounter floods, snakes, and unfriendly competitors, but nothing prepares them for the fact that the Amazonian jungle will take most of their crew and that saving the life of one brother will require leaving the other behind. The trilogy follows Henry Ford’s plot to desecrate the rainforests and own the rubber trade, the impacts of World War I and prohibition on daily American life, and, finally, the journey of a talented young soprano who travels in the latter part of the 1920s from her birthplace in Brazil to New York City, where she struggles to make peace with her Irish American father, while establishing herself in the world of metropolitan opera.

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Before We Died is an exciting fictional account that explores the very real issues around the consequences of greed and misunderstanding between cultures. Schweighardt’s story happened with rubber tappers a century ago; it continues today around oil, lumber, cattle, soy, and the mining of crystals and other resources. This book, besides being a good read, is a wake-up call!"

—John Perkins, New York Times Bestselling Author 

 

"Joan Schweighardt is a master of historical fiction. Gifts for the Dead maintains a deep sense of reference for the natural world, for non-western forms of knowledge that are being lost, and for the enduring mystery and beauty of love.”

—Magdalena Ball, CompulsiveReader.com

 

In River Aria, “Schweighardt brings to life an exquisitely-detailed personal yet universal tale of the struggles of mixed-race immigrants to the United States, post-WWI…Evocative, heartrending, and not to be missed." 
—Paula Coomer, author of Jagged Edge of the Sky and Somebody Should Have Scolded the Girl

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Joan Schweighardt is the author of novels, memoirs, children’s books and various magazine articles. In addition to her own projects, she has worked as an editor and ghostwriter for private and corporate clients for more than 25 years.