Once Upon a River

In acclaimed and award-winning author Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River (2011), a prequel to her first novel, Q Road, we learn the story of Rachel Crane, a teenager growing up in meth country outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, whose somewhat wild mother, Margo, shoots a predatory local man who won’t leave Rachel alone. Once Upon a River flashes back to Margo’s own teenage years in the late 1970s, when she was forced to leave her home to forge a hardscrabble existence while sailing a canoe down the Stark River.

When the novel opens, sixteen-year-old Margret Louise, who calls herself Margo and whose family nickname is Sprite, lives in a small Michigan town whose main employer, a metal factory, has closed down. On the one hand, this crashes the economy, making the people living there even more desperate – but on the other hand, for nature-loving Margo, this means that there will be less chemical runoff into the Stark River.

Margo is beautiful but somewhat difficult and closed-off, her personality shaped by the fact that her mother abandoned her and her father when Margo turned fourteen under somewhat unclear circumstances. Now, she and father, to whom she barely talks despite his efforts, live in a cabin across the river from her cousins and their family. For the last year, Margo has been slowly building up sharpshooter skills with a rifle that she connects to almost preternaturally, treating it as an extension of her arm. She can “kill a muskrat by shooting it in the eye (thereby leaving the hide undamaged), and she knows how to choose the sort of ammunition that won’t exit its skull on the other side.” Her perfect aim makes her identify with Annie Oakley, whose biography is the only book she owns.



A year earlier, when her beloved grandfather died and the family gathered across the river, Uncle Cal promised to show her how to skin a deer, but instead, raped her in a shed. When one of his kids caught him in the act, Cal claimed that Margo had seduced him – an idea that her embarrassed family seems to believe, ignoring the attack entirely.

Now, a year has passed, and Margo marks the occasion by shooting off the tip of her uncle’s penis. As her father and Cal’s son, Billy, rush to the scene, Billy realizes what Margo has done and, in retaliation, shoots and kills her father.

With nothing left, Margo sets out on the river in The River Rose, her grandfather’s rowboat, with nothing but her rifle, the Annie Oakley biography, and some supplies. She tries to stay hidden as much as possible – a theme that runs through the book, making Margo sound at times like a woodland animal – and to hunt, fish, and forage for food. Her vague plan is to try to find her mother, although as Campbell’s language makes it clear, the river itself is a kind of mother to Margo.



Margo makes her way using her knowledge of the natural world and her naturally cautious approach to people. At the same time, she is a headstrong teenager, and her choices often reflect a lack of experience.

In episodic encounters, Margo meets a variety of people – mostly men. First is Brian, a backwoodsman who has fallen on hard times after the closure of the factory, and now dabbles in criminal activity. He takes Margo in, and they have a sexual relationship that seems benign until his menacing brother, Paul, enters the picture, threatening Margo’s safety. Paul rapes Margo – and instead of protecting her, Brian reacts with jealousy, as if the rape were Margo’s doing. Defending herself, Margo shoots and kills Paul.

As the winter comes, Margo meets Michael, the polar opposite of most the men on the river. Gentle and calm, he opens his yellow house and his heart to Margo. Over the course of the winter, they fall in love, but the more time they spend together, the clearer it becomes that Margo is just too wild to settle down, and Michael lacks the kind of cut-throat mentality that seems necessary for life in this part of Michigan. Margo and Michael make vague plans to marry, but in the end, she realizes that he wants to transform her into a more “normal” person, and she leaves him.



The next man she encounters is never named, instead, always called “The Indian.” They meet as he is searching for the roots of his Native American ancestry, have a short and enjoyable fling, and then part ways.

Margo next encounters the man who will impact her life the most: Smoke, an old man whose daughters want to put him in a nursing home, but who would rather die in his own house. Smoke is the first man who doesn’t threaten Margo in any way – not only is he too old to get sexually involved with her, but he is also gay. He is also the first man whose physical frailty means she has to take care of him instead of relying on him to care for her. Smoke’s combination of crass manners and a gentle approach to life meshes well with her own.

After some weeks with Smoke, Margo realizes that she is pregnant. Her first impulse is to get an abortion, but she can’t gather the nerve to go alone to the clinic. Instead, she tracks down her mother, learning the details about why her mother left: when Margo turned fourteen and stopped growing taller, her mother simply decided that “she was a woman now” with no more need for parental guidance, freeing her mother to run off with another man. Still, her mother agrees to help her and takes her back to the abortion clinic. However, at the last moment, Margo changes her mind and decides to keep the baby.



She moves back in with Smoke, forming a kind of pseudo-dad/grandpa relationship. When he dies, he leaves his house to her and the baby.