The River Has Roots

I’ve always loved words. Much like my friend Jerome (from Peter H. Reynolds’ The Word Collector), I collected words for the pleasure of hearing, writing, and reading them. I’d run home and say to my mom, “Listen to this word I learned today! Isn’t it fantastic?”

Amal El-Mohtar spoke to my soul with her standalone authorial debut: The River Has Roots. The book is, in part, a retelling of the folk song The Bonny Swans, and was inspired by the author’s relationship with her sister.

The Hawthorn family tends the magical willow trees that grow by the River Liss, which flows out of Arcadia. By tradition, the sisters sing to the trees several times a day, even though obligation only requires music a few times a year. Their voices together make a kind of magic, one that mirrors the love between them. Esther, the eldest sister, is courted by a man she disdains, all while falling in love with a fairy called Rin. Ysabel sees the man’s dedication as romantic and wishes she received the same attention.

When the suitor doesn’t get what he wants, the story takes the dark turn the old ballad promises. What comes next is all riddles and wordplay, and I’ll leave that for you to discover.

Here’s where I wax poetic – El-Mohtar is the author I would want to be if I had the skill to write novels. From the first pages, I fell in love with the story, the rhythm, and the language of the book. I was listening to the audiobook, and I was so enthralled that I stopped multitasking. This was a story that deserved my undivided attention.

As it happens, the book club agreed. The story is short, so everyone at our meeting finished the book, a rare occurrence in our small corner of bookdom. We all loved the mood and atmosphere the book builds. One of our members said she could feel the tension building, and the dread kept her from enjoying the language as much as she wanted. When she finished the book, secrets now divulged, she circled back to begin again and swim in the lyric waters of the story. The group loved the playfulness of the language and the obvious joy the author has for stories.

As a group, we had “no notes.” Until our favorite contrarian joined as we were wrapping up. He alone found the narration too precious, “like being told a bedtime story.” He meant it as a complaint. I consider it a selling point of the audio.

For sure a Category 3 read and listen. In fact, I’ve already recommended it to my son’s Language Arts teacher. (TBF, his class is in the middle of a fairy tale unit, and the teacher and I have bonded over favorite authors before.) This is a hot chocolate listen and discuss.

The Leadership Lesson

As a first-generation immigrant from Argentina, I had never heard The Riddle Song until it was sung in this story. When the song says, “I gave my love a cherry that has no stone…” my mind lit up with possible solutions. In the story, Rin is stumped by the riddle and waits for Esther to answer, “A cherry when it’s bloomin’ it has no stone…”

Then Esther takes the traditional song a step further: you can move backward in time to the blossom, or forward to the pie. I’ll proudly admit that I had thought of both solutions (yay me!).

Backward to the blossom, forward to the pie.

The answer was never hidden. It was just somewhere Rin wasn’t looking.

Many leaders make the mistake of thinking it’s their job to have all the answers. I can’t count how many times I’ve helped people crawl out of this trap. It’s the leader’s job to create space for the right answers to ripen. Sometimes that means relying on an expert, leaning into the team, or reframing the problem until a solution surfaces.

Turning a challenge around in time, looking back at where it came from and forward to where it could go, shifts us from hunting for “a solution” into a much richer, thought-provoking exercise.

There’s always the opportunity to jump to the easy answer. Resist it. Your job isn’t to have the answer. It’s to keep turning the question until the answer blossoms. 🌸 🍒

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