cover image The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream

The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream

Katharine Norbury. Bloomsbury, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-1-62040-995-4

In this engaging story full of old Welsh and Scottish names, British film editor Norbury uses the search for the source of a river—physically as well as metaphorically—to convey the need for finding her birth mother. The notion of following a river to its source grew from reading the novel The Well at the World’s End by the Scottish writer Neil M. Gunn. Norburry set out several times, either alone or with her nine-year-old daughter, Evie, to find these sources—of Dunbeath Water, Scotland, mentioned in the novel, and also many rivers near Norbury’s summer cottage in Wales and family home in Cheshire, England. A miscarriage of a baby she eagerly wanted triggered thoughts of her own adoption. She also recalls her long-ago visit to the convent of the Sisters of Mercy, outside of Liverpool on the Mersey River, where she learned from the nuns that she was in fact a cherished baby and cared for by Sister Marie Therese. There are many moments of extraordinary synergy in this limpid, patiently meandering narrative, and Norbury manages to incorporate them in a natural, light-pedaling fashion. Her search for her biological mother, the sudden ill health of her beloved adopted mother, and Norbury’s discovery of a tumor lodged deep in her own rib cage all shape an extraordinary and moving journey. (Aug.)