The River Between Us Analysis

Thanks to the two narrators and two time periods, we get to deal with more than one setting in this puppy. Let's take it chronologically, though, and look at 1861 first. We open in the first month...

Okay, so we have ourselves two first-person narrators. One's a way bigger player than the other, though, so let's start small and work from there.Howard narrates the frame story, i.e., the first an...

The historical fiction part is fairly self-explanatory: The River Between Us is fiction, and it's set in the past—during the Civil War, to be precise—so it's historical fiction. YA novels deal...

We have two narrators—Howard and Tilly—but Tilly really sets the tone of the story. Howard does little more than introduce us to Tilly and wrap the whole thing up neatly at the end. The last th...

As narrators, both Tilly and Howard are grounded in their particular place and time. Tilly's voice is distinctly from the rural Midwest, her dialect obvious in the way the author transcribes her sp...

The River Between Us, eh? Not to blow your mind or anything, but there's this river, the Mississippi, and it seems to come between a lot of people in this book. Shocking, we know.Geographically, th...

Howard sits on the running board of the Ford Model T touring car. His dad has just told him that Noah and Delphine, not Dr. Hutchings and Tilly, are his grandparents. His dad isn't sure how Howard...

We're dealing with two stories, one set in 1916 and told by one narrator and the other set in 1861 and told by a different narrator. For the most part, though, the stories stay out of each other's...

Road TripThe first chapter sets up the frame story—you know, the one narrated by Howard Leland Hutchings that opens and closes the book. Howard, his dad, and his 5-year-old twin brothers travel...

How's this for a first writing gig? Richard Peck got his start ghostwriting sermons for Army chaplains. (Source) Richard Peck writes all of his books on an electric typewriter. Every. Single. One....

These are people who sew themselves into their underwear in October and cut themselves out of it in spring. Or, at least the Pruitts are—we admit we can't imagine Delphine pulling that. Anyway, D...

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