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As a River
It’s 1977. Bannen, Georgia, nestled amid pine forests, is rife with contrasts: natural beauty and racial tension, small-town charm and long-term poverty. An unsettling place for a Black man who fled it years ago and has since traveled the world.
But Greer Michaels has to come home, to care for his dying mother.
And that means he’ll have to reckon with the devastating secret that drove him out in the first place.
Greer’s story is intertwined with those of the people around him: His mother, Elizabeth, who once had a dazzling singing voice but fell silent years ago. Their neighbor Esse, who has turned to religion after her own traumatic past. Esse’s teenaged daughter, Ceiley, an insatiable reader with a burning curiosity about life beyond Bannen’s town limits.
Written in spare and lyrical prose, AS A RIVER moves back and forth across decades, evoking the mysterious play of memory as it touches upon shame and redemption, despair and connection. An exploration of family secrets rooted in the turbulent history of the segregated South, AS A RIVER is ultimately about our struggles to understand each other, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
But Greer Michaels has to come home, to care for his dying mother.
And that means he’ll have to reckon with the devastating secret that drove him out in the first place.
Greer’s story is intertwined with those of the people around him: His mother, Elizabeth, who once had a dazzling singing voice but fell silent years ago. Their neighbor Esse, who has turned to religion after her own traumatic past. Esse’s teenaged daughter, Ceiley, an insatiable reader with a burning curiosity about life beyond Bannen’s town limits.
Written in spare and lyrical prose, AS A RIVER moves back and forth across decades, evoking the mysterious play of memory as it touches upon shame and redemption, despair and connection. An exploration of family secrets rooted in the turbulent history of the segregated South, AS A RIVER is ultimately about our struggles to understand each other, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
218 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 2019
About the author
Sion Dayson
1 book40 followersSion Dayson was born in New York City, grew up in North Carolina, and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, Hunger Mountain, and many other venues, and her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin.
She has won grants and residencies from The Kerouac House, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Program. She also got the chance to spend a month writing in Edith Wharton's house, The Mount.
Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain, where she has taught English as a Foreign Language and works as a voice actor in her professional home studio.
As a River is her first novel. It was a Foreword Indies Finalist, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee, and is currently shortlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize.
Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, Hunger Mountain, and many other venues, and her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin.
She has won grants and residencies from The Kerouac House, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Program. She also got the chance to spend a month writing in Edith Wharton's house, The Mount.
Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain, where she has taught English as a Foreign Language and works as a voice actor in her professional home studio.
As a River is her first novel. It was a Foreword Indies Finalist, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee, and is currently shortlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 30, 2019
A quiet, beautifully-told story. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
As a River is based in Georgia in the 1970s, a heated time for race relations in this small southern town. Greer Michaels has returned home to care for his dying mother after a lifetime of traveling the world. Returning home also means he’ll have to face the secrets as to why he left.
Greer is surrounded by other characters the reader also comes to know well. One of them, Ceiley, is an avid reader I think we all could relate to! His mother, Elizabeth, used to have an impressive voice for singing (this reminded me of my dad). I loved all the characters for different reasons.
As a River is a story of family and those secrets that bring shame and perhaps hope when they are unearthed and accepted. To find out the rest of the messages, you’ll just have to read this beauty because I can’t give away the heart of the story, the part that gives me chills when I think about it, and I mean the kind of chills that are warm and fuzzy and awe-inspiring.
Overall, As a River is a quiet story, yet heartily and indelibly profound. Sion Dayson, I hope you have more stories to tell us!
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com
As a River is based in Georgia in the 1970s, a heated time for race relations in this small southern town. Greer Michaels has returned home to care for his dying mother after a lifetime of traveling the world. Returning home also means he’ll have to face the secrets as to why he left.
Greer is surrounded by other characters the reader also comes to know well. One of them, Ceiley, is an avid reader I think we all could relate to! His mother, Elizabeth, used to have an impressive voice for singing (this reminded me of my dad). I loved all the characters for different reasons.
As a River is a story of family and those secrets that bring shame and perhaps hope when they are unearthed and accepted. To find out the rest of the messages, you’ll just have to read this beauty because I can’t give away the heart of the story, the part that gives me chills when I think about it, and I mean the kind of chills that are warm and fuzzy and awe-inspiring.
Overall, As a River is a quiet story, yet heartily and indelibly profound. Sion Dayson, I hope you have more stories to tell us!
I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com
September 15, 2019
How fortunate I was to read this novel as it made its way toward publication, and how delighted I am to know the rest of the world can now be transformed by the powerful story and gracious, poetic prose.
Debut novelist Sion Dayson has created a novel like blown glass- somehow beautifully fragile yet impossibly strong- a work of art that changes shape and color and texture depending on the angle and the light. I loved it. I loved it. I slipped so easily into Greer, Caroline, Esse- everyone- the characters have textures and depth that took such skill to layer in.
As A River is not to be missed.
Debut novelist Sion Dayson has created a novel like blown glass- somehow beautifully fragile yet impossibly strong- a work of art that changes shape and color and texture depending on the angle and the light. I loved it. I loved it. I slipped so easily into Greer, Caroline, Esse- everyone- the characters have textures and depth that took such skill to layer in.
As A River is not to be missed.
September 5, 2019
I hope this wins all the prizes, because it should. What a sparkling debut by Sion Dayson.
April 16, 2019
I was fortunate to read an advance copy of this beautiful, deeply moving work from a fellow Jaded Ibis Press author. Forthcoming in September.
May 5, 2019
I had the distinct pleasure of reading an advance copy of this book, and I cannot recommend it heartily enough. Dayson manages through deft, beautiful language to convey a gentle story of homecoming, love, and finding out who one truly is. Across multiple generations of characters, this story evokes a tumultuous period in American history with care, gravitas, and genuine emotion. Never does it rely on shock value, as it could; instead, it guides the reader along quietly through the hearts and lives of characters that come to life from page one and stay with the reader long past the end.
January 30, 2020
Sion Dayson's debut novel "As a River" moves along much like a river – smoothly and compellingly, with fascinating twists and turns. The plight of Greer Michaels, the novel's protagonist, who returns to his small southern hometown sixteen years after he'd left it, becomes especially moving and immediate as he struggles to care for his dying mother and, in the process, grapple with the ghosts of his past. But Dayson demonstrates great compassion for all of her characters, and they each come fully alive, the major and minor alike. Masterfully, she excavates a story that spans decades, and she does so in fresh and richly imagined prose that brings new eyes to the age-old themes of family and belonging, of how much we can choose and how much we must leave behind.
September 11, 2019
A beautifully-rendered debut novel about the trials of star-crossed lovers, As a River reaches far beyond the story of one young couple and into the tumult of racial/class tensions in a time and place not far from here and now. This is both an on the edge of the seat read and a take your time over the lushness of the landscape and the sensuality of the south in summer. I read this book straight through!
September 28, 2019
"As a River" is Greer’s story--a story of leaving and returning. And we first meet him as he returns to take care of his dying mother, which raises the question for the reader of why he left. From there, the novel unfolds with chapters that alternate between the present of 1977 and a past that goes back thirty-two years and comes to us in layers, each one containing a secret that pushes the story forward. As we spend more and more time in the past, we become aware of the racial tension in this small southern town and can imagine how much relief might be found in walking along the river. "As a River" asks the reader to take a close look at the question of shame, the reach of family secrets, and the decisions we make, almost without consideration, that define our lives.
September 5, 2021
This is a beautifully written book with carefully crafted characters and turns of phrase so poetic that I found myself pausing throughout the book to reflect. Rich in imagery and metaphor, it’s a book that deserves to be savored. Sion Dayson has artfully woven the past and present together, piecing together the different characters’ stories in such a way that they all come alive.
My favorite passage:
“When a bone breaks, you have to reset it. It grows back on its own if nothing is done, but it will be misaligned, damaged in the nerves, possibly infected.
“I wonder if it is the same for people. They break, put the pieces back together best they can, but they are never the same. And what about the heart?”
My favorite passage:
“When a bone breaks, you have to reset it. It grows back on its own if nothing is done, but it will be misaligned, damaged in the nerves, possibly infected.
“I wonder if it is the same for people. They break, put the pieces back together best they can, but they are never the same. And what about the heart?”
November 9, 2019
This book was hauntingly magical, and the prose beautiful. The way this story--about how choices, harms, families, and heartbreaks create impacts that ripple across generations--moves back and forth through time, much like the river in the title and the river in the novel, drew me in and kept me moving forward so that I read the entire book in one day. I highly recommend going to your local independent book store and getting yourself a copy and then settling in for the journey on which "As a River" will take you.
December 30, 2019
When a novel makes you cry, you know it's doing something right! AS A RIVER does many, many things right. Exquisitely written and deeply moving, this book stands apart as a work of debut fiction. There are many familiar themes--forbidden love, family secrets, reckonings with past mistakes--but in Dayson's masterful hands they are rendered new and original. This is a courageous piece of literature, to be savored. I read passages over and over, marveling. I can't wait to see what else this author has in store.
November 6, 2019
Loved it! Thank you for creating Greer: a good man who is strong and kind and emotional and awkward - a real human being. It's refreshing to have a positive male character. I love how meeting him changed the dynamic between Ceiley and Esse. Full of fascinating twists and delicious imagery. Can't wait to read it again!
May 3, 2019
I had the opportunity to get an ARC of this book at AWP19 in Portland. Sion Dayson has done a solid job in her debut novel, creating an interesting cast of characters and weaving together a good, if a little tropey, story. I look forward to seeing what she does in the future.
September 23, 2019
I loved the pacing in this book, I could really feel the Southern heat, and the way the past sticks to you... Special shoutout to fantastic portrayal of minor characters; Esse, in particular, jumped off the page in very few words.
September 26, 2019
A beautiful meditation on home and homecoming, set in a Southern town where past and present are equally present and equally fraught. Dayson offers gorgeous prose and a timeline that builds dread with every turned page.
October 3, 2019
I really loved this story. The writing is beautiful in a story of complicated love and secrets. The shifts between points of view and time are seamless and an important aspect of how each character’s past and present are revealed. Lovely.
November 20, 2019
This was absolutely amazing, I could not put it down. Sion Dayson you are brilliant & thank you for sharing/writing this! I weeped when I fished this at 1am & had so much love & gratitude for my parents...thank you!
November 19, 2023
Brilliant, heartfelt and full of poetry. Would give 5 stars but it took me a little while to get into it and get my bearings. So many one-line succinct moments in the text that sum up exactly something complex that I've felt before but been unable to articulate.
October 7, 2019
Marilyn Agney
October 5 at 6:04 PM ·
Sion is from Chapel Hill. "As a River" is her debut novel. I just "devoured" the book ... couldn't put it down. Check it out.
October 5 at 6:04 PM ·
Sion is from Chapel Hill. "As a River" is her debut novel. I just "devoured" the book ... couldn't put it down. Check it out.
October 20, 2019
Loved this book and the author - it stuck in my head and felt like magic how it wove together different times
November 10, 2019
A poetic first novel from a brilliant storyteller. I can’t wait to read more from Sion Dayson!
January 1, 2020
Poignant, tender and intriguing. I loved it. A gentle read even though it covered some hard realities.
February 8, 2020
Beautiful story. Poetic, important, and lasting.
June 25, 2020
Where has this author been all my life?! Sion has an incredible way of captivating her readers and weaving a story. I did not want this book to end!
April 7, 2021
I really needed this book at the time that I read it. It’s so beautifully written, touches on the saga of unfinished business that can make up entire lifetimes, the capacity of life to enforce change at moments when you least expect it. “Somehow, even with all its chaos, the universe kept itself from simply falling apart.”
It’s clear that this was a labor of love by the author - the care taken to unfold the secrets over time lapses and cross-character narratives... Black resilience and self rediscovery amidst facing the traumas of the segregated South... how to somehow still find beauty and compassion in the mix of love and loss and betrayal.
This is firmly in my top favorites, highly recommend.
It’s clear that this was a labor of love by the author - the care taken to unfold the secrets over time lapses and cross-character narratives... Black resilience and self rediscovery amidst facing the traumas of the segregated South... how to somehow still find beauty and compassion in the mix of love and loss and betrayal.
This is firmly in my top favorites, highly recommend.
November 10, 2019
You can’t go home again, the adage says. Thomas Wolfe’s novel by the same name underlines this concept: that changes occur over time in a fondly remembered place, rendering home an entirely different place. In her debut novel, Sion Dayson diverts this notion of nostalgia, showing us that it’s also impossible to escape home’s demons without facing the past head-on.
Dayson’s protagonist, Greer Michaels, must come home. His mother is dying. Sixteen years ago, teenaged Greer fled his segregated hometown of Bannen, Georgia, with its dogwoods, its maple trees, its shortleaf pines, and the river that divides the town.
“It should have been harder for a young black boy to slip undetected from a small Southern town,” says the novel’s opening line. ... full review at https://themuseumofamericana.net/sion...
Dayson’s protagonist, Greer Michaels, must come home. His mother is dying. Sixteen years ago, teenaged Greer fled his segregated hometown of Bannen, Georgia, with its dogwoods, its maple trees, its shortleaf pines, and the river that divides the town.
“It should have been harder for a young black boy to slip undetected from a small Southern town,” says the novel’s opening line. ... full review at https://themuseumofamericana.net/sion...
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews