Books published by White River Press

How far would you go to protect someone you love? Nothing is black or white in the murky town of Alderman, North Carolina, no matter how much the human and ghostly residents of Idyllic Grove Rice Plantation would like it to be. In 1949, fourteen-year-old Lillian Green witnesses the unthinkable. Her choice to remain silent about what she saw ripples into the swamp water surrounding her family's home, awakening the ghost of Roberta du Bois, former rice plantation mistress, who drowned herself in the swamp in 1859. Roberta and Lillian forge a bond based on shame, silence, and an impenetrable loneliness. When Lillian's daughter Hannah is born into the maze of haunted hallways, Lillian has no interest in raising her. Left alone, Hannah discovers Roberta as well as her own exceptional singing voice. The tangled storylines of the three women rooted to this Southern landscape pull the reader into the layers of racism, family loyalties, and hidden relationships that intertwine as naturally as the kudzu that covers the trees where the Swamp Sirens sing. When the truth about what Lillian saw surfaces, no one, living or dead, can prevent what must come next.

During the spring of 2008, one of the media's feeding frenzies involved a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago, pastored by the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. For days and weeks, all one could see on every news channel were a few very short clips, absent of context, of Reverend Wright's sermons preached some time ago. What followed outraged many on both sides of the political fence. The sound bites lent themselves to commentators' easy, negative analysis of the sermons. In the traditional media, commentators offered an interpretation, couched in the language of patriotism, that Wright was too angry, that he overstated the problem of racism in America today. While some were extremely frustrated at this nearly universal take on Wright's sermons and felt it served to mask the continuing reality of racial oppression, others saw a positive side, in that racism had resurfaced as a topic of conversation in homes across America. Nearly forty years after the Civil Rights Movement had "fixed everything," people started talking, discussing, and even arguing about racism in the United States. Was racism still with us? If so, how could that be after such a long period of time? Or had racism just changed from blatant, in-your-face discrimination to a new, post-affirmative action, "color-blind" racism. -from the introduction to Moving Beyond Racism Meet the twenty-one authors of Moving Beyond Racism who were moved to share their compelling personal memories and the events that inspired their reassessment of the complexities of race relations in 21st century America. You'll nod in recognition, shake your head in disbelief, and bear witness to the courage and self-knowledge that comes from bravely facing the place that racial attitudes play in our everyday lives. Make no mistake, the people you are about to meet are your neighbors, your co-workers, and your friends. Moving Beyond Racism is about all of us.

The celebration of the 40th anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth provided an ideal opportunity to issue the seventh edition of The Dartmouth Songbook. This new edition documents in print for the first time the modern four-part arrangements for the richer tonal palette of combined men and women's voices. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Dartmouth songs underwent sweeping changes with the addition of women's voices - some purely musical, others focusing on more inclusive lyrics. These songs celebrate the emotional and enduring connection that all members of the Dartmouth family have with one another and to the institution. We offer this latest edition of The Dartmouth Songbook as testimony to Dartmouth's ability to combine its storied past with its ever-evolving present. We hope that you will treasure these powerfully evocative songs as much as we do.