WInner of the
PEN New England
Children's Book Caucus
2008 Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award

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"I loved this powerful story that is wrought with such skill and told in soaring language. Readers will long remember these memorable characters as they struggle against disaster. A splendid work!"

---Patricia Reilly Giff

Sixteen-year-old Celestia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel’s hired boy. It’s a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it’s a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May, 1889. After days of heavy rain, the dam fails, unleashing 20 million tons of water onto Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the valley below. The town where Peter lives with his father. The town where Celestia has just arrived to join him. This searing novel in poems explores a cross-class romance—and a tragic event in U.S. history.

Teachers, librarians, book clubs: download the Reader Guide.

Starred review: School Library Journal (April, 2010)

RICHARDS, Jame. Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood. 304p. Knopf/Borzoi. Apr. 2010. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-0-375-85885-7; PLB $19.99. ISBN 978-0-375-95885-4. LC number unavailable.

Gr 8 Up–Historical fiction can be a hard sell, but this gem of a novel-in-verse is indeed worth selling. It is set against the backdrop of a Gilded Age playground for society’s upper crust, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club of Pennsylvania’s Lake Conemaugh. The cross-class romance between Celestia, daughter of a wealthy businessman and his obedient society wife, and Peter, summer help and son of a miner from the valley below, is absorbing. It is, however, not the entirety of this rich tale of a real-life natural disaster, the Johnstown Flood of 1889. The flood lies in wait throughout the narrative as allusions are made to the weakness of the dam miles above the working-class shantytowns below. After an unfortunate family situation separates Celestia and Peter the summer of their meeting, she returns to the lake for the summer of 1889 ready to disavow her family and find her beloved. Readers will cheer for this young couple to beat the odds together, and they’ll tear through the pages as the tension and drama of the approaching flood rise, oblivious to the exhaustive research and attention to historical detail beneath. This book’s ability to wear so many hats–heart-tugging romance, nail-biting suspense novel, and social commentary (it is ripe for discussion about wealth and class in America or society’s response to natural disaster) more than earns it a place on the shelves of all libraries serving teens.–Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT

Starred review: Kirkus Reviews (March 15, 2010)

Richards, Jame
THREE RIVERS RISING: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood (star)
Told in free verse with multiple voices, this novel dramatically recreates the impact of the historic tragedy of the Johnstown, Pa., flood on the lives of six people from 1888 to 1889. At the heart of the story is Celestia’s love for Peter, an illicit romance between a young girl of high society and the resort’s hired boy, which her father forbids. To save the family’s reputation, her father arranges to send her to Switzerland with her aunt, but when it’s discovered that Celestia’s pretty, engaged sister is pregnant, Estrella is sent instead. When the dam literally bursts, the tsunami is both physical and emotional, uprooting all their lives, including those of Maura, the wife of a railroad conductor, and Kate, a trained nurse scarred by the drowning of her beloved. As the three rivers converge, so do the lives of the characters in their efforts to survive. With an atmosphere like that of Jennifer Donnelly’s A Northern Light (2003) and skilled wordsmithing akin to Jen Bryant’s, the staccato pulsing of this love story builds the tension and puts human faces on a devastating disaster. (author’s note, timeline, further reading) (Historical fiction. YA)

Booklist (April 15, 2010)

Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood.
Richards, Jame (Author)
Apr 2010. 304 p. Knopf, hardcover, $16.99. (9780375858857). Knopf, library edition, $19.99.
(9780375958854).

This debut novel in verse uses the 1889 Johnstown flood to explore class divisions and social mores in a
moving portrait of four fictional families. Celestia’s nouveau riche family would like her to “marry well
and advance the family’s reputation with a pedigreed husband, but she has fallen in love with Peter, a hired
hand at the resort hotel. In Johnstown proper lives Maura, a young woman with four small children and a
loving husband. On a train to Johnston on the day of the flood is Kate, a widowed nurse who lost her
beloved husband and stifles her own emotions by caring for others. The stories intersect in small but
beautifully crafted ways. As in Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust (1997), Richards uses spare, clear language
to both advance the story and create memorable characters. “Even before the kiss / my heart is beating so
hard / that it scarcely leaves room for air.” Richards provides a time line and bibliography for readers
intrigued by the flood. Those who loved Titanic will be drawn to this intensely romantic and polished
story. — Debbie Carton

Publishers Weekly (March 29, 2010) (19,500)

Three Rivers Rising: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood Jame Richards. Knopf, $16.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-375-85885-7

Threads of romance and class run through this striking novel in verse, set against the 1889 Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania. Debut author Richards alternates among several teenagers and adults whose lives intersect before, during, and after the disaster. In the most prominent story line, 16-year-old Celestia (“if I am not the fun-loving beauty,/ then I must be the serious one”) and her family enjoy peaceful summers at the Lake Conemaugh resort until her spirited older sister becomes pregnant and Celestia falls in love with a hired hand, enraging their parents. Maura's narrative focuses on her home life—she has three children by age 17 (“How can a house full of babies feel empty?”)—and her determination as the flood hits. And Kate's story follows her arduous journey to become a nurse after the death of her first love, as well as her role in the rescue when typhoid breaks out. Richards builds strong characters with few words and artfully interweaves the lives of these independent thinkers. Celestia's taboo relationship feels dramatic and sweeping, while the various minute-by-minute accounts during the flood are painful and immediate. Ages 12–up. (Apr.)