Join us for a conversation with local author Emilie-Noelle Provost on her new book The River is Everywhere (March, 2023). Book signing to follow reading. 

The River Is Everywhere Cover Blurb

Sixteen-year-old honors student Ernest Benoit has always followed the rules. But after his best friend drowns on Cape Cod, he begins to question his family’s devout Catholicism. He disrupts an Advent prayer service at his Catholic high school, and his life will never be the same.

A blizzard leaves Ernest stranded in a depressed western Massachusetts mill town after he boards a bus to Manhattan to avoid being sent to a Jesuit boarding school. It’s the beginning of a months-long journey that leads him to rescue a young girl from an icy river, into the bed of a lonely middle-aged widow, and to the woodland cabin of Roland Laliberté, a recluse who can shoot with the accuracy of a sniper.

When the widow falsely accuses Ernest of rape, Roland smuggles him over the Canadian border where they settle into life on the New Brunswick farm where Roland’s grew up. Ernest takes a job in the Lalibertés’ sawmill, and falls in love with the girl next door. But it’s not long before the local police start asking questions, and when Ernest finds out his girlfriend is pregnant, it’s suddenly unclear whether he’ll ever be able to return home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emilie-Noelle Provost lives in an old mill city in Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and three crazy rescue cats. She is also author of the middle-grade adventure novel, The Blue Bottle (North Country Press, 2018). When she’s not writing, she can usually be found on hiking trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.