During the Great Depression, Lewis Seagrove struggles to provide for his wife and three children; an honest man, he will still do whatever necessary to take care of them. The stunning novel River Ice is about prejudice and survival. Lewis climbs onto a moving rail car carrying coal so he can throw some off, jumps from the train, and walks along the track to gather it. He takes a small row boat at night, making a treacherous trip across the 1,500-foot-wide Ohio River to pilfer vegetables from gardens on the Kentucky side. At the river, Lewis meets a young black kid squatting in an old river cabin. Sam is the son of a Mississippi sharecropper and the two develop a relationship. Lewis helps Sam get a job in his tenement building. Lewis' 12-year-old daughter, Dorothy, helps the family by taking a paper route.
