Long Bright River by Liz Moore

Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister—before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence,
Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

Why I Picked It Up

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The God of the Woods had been in my orbit for a while, and Liz Moore alongside it. I really enjoyed her sophomore (?) novel and am looking forward to the TV adaptation. My sister said Long Bright River was actually her favorite, and so I wanted to go backwards into her list—which is often how it goes.

About the Book

Long Bright River focuses on a cop, Mickey, in a neighborhood of Pennsylvania heavily affected by the opiod epidemic. Her own sister's been swept up in using, so Mickey tries to keep an eye out of her—and gets concerned when bodies start appearing that are shoddily-covered murders. The city claims they're drug-related, but Mickey keeps expecting to see her sister's name appear in the deceased. Over the course of the book, we uncover the unraveling backstory of the sisters and their own troubled upbringing; the street network Kacey's gotten swept into; the distrust of law enforcement; the ticking clock.

The plot itself is interesting, again more of a slow burn than something teeming with intensity—more Mare of Easttown than Criminal Minds, as a procedural reference.

Characters & Tone

It may be the nature of Liz Moore's plots, but I didn't get a lot of personality from Mickey--not much of what she loved or cared about, beyond her son, which was a tender and touching relationship. I would have liked more, and do think her style and prose makes the story feel somewhat distant from the people involved, but a big part of the plot is that Mickey's been raised to have hardness and shut down affection. (There's an impactful part of the book where her son says I love you and she asks where he learned to stay that.)

Having now read two Liz Moore books, I'm starting to draw a pattern in which I never feel that close or called to her characters, but also find them somewhat satisfyingly complicated.

Gee, for example, the grandmother who raised Mickey and her sisters—there's a complex loyalty and resentment there in that they're all tied together but it's not warm or resentful. It occupies a certain reluctant acts-of-service connection that can be frustrating but not worth giving up on, which felt true to life.

While I didn't feel the sense of personal connection I normally prefer, I absolutely love rock-and-a-hard-place characterization, so appreciated the constraints there. You don't have to agree with characters' choices to feel sympathetic; they felt natural to their ecosystems.

Pacing & Tone

She doesn't use dialogue markers, which adds to that muted literary effect.

The grizzled cop—True Detective: Night Country, Mare of Easttown—is a trope done well here. Much of Mickey's reality was dampened or controlled by her family members, and figuring out where that was realistic love vs. hopeless restriction was interesting. Was her world made too small from the get-go because of the nihilism of others? Nature vs. nurture.

Overall Thoughts

Long Bright River grapples with the shades of gray in domains like harm reduction, motherhood and babies born addicted, law enforcement itself, etc. The narrative can be cold, a feeling doubled down on by the short, sharp chapters and lack of dialogue marks, but was constantly engrossing. There were one or two moments that surprised me. While I think I was expecting more from the end of the book—a sense of catharsis, or a real peak—there was a gradual escalation that was intelligent and interesting.

For fans of:

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore; Mare of Easttown (TV); Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley; Dopesick by Beth Macy; Sadie by Courtney Summers; etc.