Book Review: Trinity Rivers Trilogy
Trinity Rivers Trilogy. K. Blanton Brenner, Brenner Pathways, 25 April 2023, Paperback and eBook, 500 pages.
Reviewed by Paula Mikrut.
Trinity Rivers Trilogy is the story of three generations of the family of Birdsong “Birdy” Olivier and Michael Quinn.
Birdy is a world-famous soprano whose nickname is “The Songbird of the South.” She was shaped by poverty and prejudice as the daughter of a black woman and a white man in 1950s Louisiana, and by the violent death of her mother, who sacrificed her life to save Birdy when she was raped at the age of eleven. Confident and successful professionally, she is also withdrawn and distrustful of others.
Quinn, one of her professors at Juilliard, is the love of Birdy’s life. He grew up in a Catholic family in Northern Ireland which was battered by violence and prejudice. During his time in the IRA, he caused the death of a young couple, and his feelings of guilt weigh on everything he does.
Birdy and Quinn fall in love and Quinn decides to become the man Birdy thinks he is. When he returns to Ireland to apologize for his sins, he is arrested and put in prison for seven years. Not wanting to admit his crimes to Birdy, he doesn’t get word to her, and Birdy has no idea what became of him. Pregnant with twins, she grows to hate him for abandoning her.
This is a family that is talented—one man refers to them as musical royalty—and privileged by the wealth that Birdy’s career provides, but their wealth doesn’t protect them from racism, homophobia, misogyny, or religious discrimination.
There is a lot to like about this book. The story is well-paced and kept me interested across three generations and five hundred pages. It is never predictable, but everything that happens arises naturally from the book’s characters and circumstances. It uses point of view effectively, and I especially appreciated when the author revisits a scene from multiple points of view to help us gain different perspectives.
The characters are real and complex. With a few exceptions, there are no evil people lurking in the shadows, waiting to inflict harm. There are only real humans, who have suffered in the ways that many people in our world suffer, and who cope with their pain in ways that often pass it onto others.
If you can, I recommend buying the print version of this book. There are many formatting and editing problems in the eBook, and the paperback is much cleaner. Both editions have some jarring transitions, which could easily be solved with section breaks. But if you can overlook these issues, you’ll be rewarded with a well-told story that is well worth telling.
The book includes a quote by Hemingway: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” This captured the essence of Trinity Rivers Trilogy for me, which is all about trauma and how we deal with it. Through its characters, we can see the effects of trauma, which are profound and can mutate and be passed down through generations and manifest itself in sometimes shocking ways.