A gift of clairvoyance: River of Dreams by Robin Blackburn McBride

Annabelle Avery Conlon, the appealing heroine of Canadian writer Robin Blackburn McBride’s newest novel, has a richly developed interior life, letting her thoughts flow with utter honesty as she narrates her out-of-the-ordinary path. Her inward focus is partly personality-driven, partly a logical consequence of events that change her.

If you developed the sudden ability to experience visions following a life-threatening accident, you’d probably be hesitant to speak of it.  Especially in a time and place like early 20th-century Toronto, where young Avery sees firsthand how girls and women are stifled if they depart from societal norms.

Pub. by Guernica Editions (Oct. 2026)

“When I look at you, Jennie, I see a baby. Does that mean anything to you?”

In the prologue, set in 1923, we view Avery in action as a nurse in a grim institution for the mentally ill. She later realizes her patient isn’t insane, but consumed by anguish, and tries to help Jennie work her way to recovery. Throughout this unusual novel, a blend of historical fiction with the supernatural, Avery’s decisions on how and when to use her newfound abilities instill the story with a feeling of compassion and hope.

As a child, hope is a quality Avery clings to in a world she learns is full of lies. When she’s just twelve, in 1914, her brother is born, and she overhears an odd comment from the midwife that makes her question her own parentage. Her mind filled with frustration and anger, a winter accident on the Don River leads to a near-death experience under the ice, complete with shimmery glimpses of a mysterious “River Boy” and scenes from her past, including a woman with blonde hair and silvery rings who held her as a baby.

As she grows, her desire to find her birth mother—if that’s indeed who she saw in her vision—drives Avery forward, as does her determination to use her gift to help vulnerable women at the lowest point in their lives, her healing process surpassing the abilities of traditional medicine. A potential romance, however, has her wondering how far she can trust her partner with knowledge of her secret intuition.

The writing is warm and fluid as it moves between Avery’s experiences and her personal journey of self-discovery against a period-appropriate background of “windsilvered water” and childhood fairy-tale books, of grisly wartime images and the dankness of an asylum’s forgotten basement. Wonder and dread, intertwined, and Avery must bravely steer her own course through it all.

Her expressions of amazement (“Holy cow,” “Hell’s bells”) and frequent habit of posing internal questions bring out her personality, but fewer examples of these would have been more effective. Still, Avery remains intriguing company through her everlasting pursuit of greater understanding and truth.

River of Dreams was published by Guernica Editions, an Ontario-based press, on October 1 ($18.00 / CAN $24.95, 250pp).