What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez is adventurous historical fiction with a dollop of magical realism following Inez Olivera, a spirited young woman from Argentina, and Whitford Hayes (Whit), a disillusioned British ex-soldier who lost his way. 90% of the book is written from Inez’s POV, although several chapters have a short end cap from Whit.
In the late nineteenth century, Inez’s parents are presumed dead after going missing in the deserts of Egypt, and she is determined to discover what exactly happened. She joins her archaeologist uncle in Cairo, where she meets Whit, the man hired to help Tio Ricardo, and also to do his dirty work. Why does an archaeologist have need of someone like this? There is seedy business going on in the field, where there are those who would steal and sell priceless historical artifacts for personal profit, rather than preserve it for its significance to cultural heritage. This makes for downright dangerous business, and Inez’s tio immediately tries to send her back home to Argentina.
He tries and he fails (see the description of Inez, “a spirited young woman”). After repeating this cycle a few times, Inez successfully finds herself part of the team searching for the tomb of none other than Cleopatra. She is thrilled at the idea of assisting with such an endeavor, but her main goal is always to learn the truth of what happened to her parents.
This story is chock full of mystery, adventure, history, and magic. There is a prominent romance element as well. It was really a good deal of fun! The one thing I found irritating was that an easily avoided lack of communication was used to develop the majority of tension in the plot. Inez asks for information over and over again, and if people JUST TOLD HER THE TRUTH, so many of the things that go wrong in this story would have been avoided. This is always pretty frustrating to me as a reader!
I’m not sure why this is billed as Young Adult, as the main character is 19, and there are no particular themes that stand out to me as YA.
Also, BE FOREWARNED, it seems this is planned to be the first book in a series, because it does “end” with some pretty major cliffhangers, including one big twist,
The comparison of this story to The Mummy is apt (I couldn’t speak to Death on the Nile.) I greatly enjoyed the Egyptian setting, although couldn’t say how much of the way it was depicted here is accurate (possibly very, it seems well researched, I just don’t know much about how it felt to visit Cairo in 1844). I really liked both Inez and Whit, so the romance piece worked for me as well. This is my first time reading a work by this author, and I was not disappointed.
Jessica Crawford 