The River on our Hands

AJ Wright's The River on our Hands is as much a historical account as it is a poetry collection. The book explores growing up in a small West Virginia town on the banks of the Ohio River: our poet faces encroaching floodwater on a trip to the store, constructs a makeshift airplane from leftover wood and rusted metal, and watches the river through the windows of old cars. The backdrop is the aftermath of tragedy, calcifying into the town's story: the collapse of the Pleasants Power Station cooling tower that killed fifty-one workers. It was the deadliest construction disaster America had known. In The River on our Hands, AJ Wright asks what silence carries through personal and collective memory, and how the tragedy echoes through the land and people who continue to live in the region.