Fox is the teenage son of a single mom who has grown up poor and transient until he arrives in Orange, California, with his first chance at a sense of belonging. He soon meets Axel, an eccentric loner with a hyperactive imagination who introduces him to the fenced off no-man’s land of a riverbed that winds through the suburban neighborhood where they live. There fantasy and reality collide in the stories they invent, the games they play, and the powers they resist.
When Axel gets into trouble with the authoritarian pastor of his church, he runs away both for real and into his own fantasies. Fox goes looking for him in more ways than one, accompanied by his friend Angel, a Latinx girl with a critical mind and a singular sense of justice. What they all end up finding is the courage to be themselves and to care for one another in a world that doesn’t much value either.
The Riverbed tells the story of three intelligent young people coming to learn about the darker sides of the suburban dream they call home. Written in a fabulating style but with a realist’s eye for the details of place, history, and nature, it combines the moral seriousness of J. D. Salinger with the playfulness of a Wes Anderson movie. It will be loved by readers of all persuasions – those with their heads in the clouds no less than those with their feet on the ground.
Table of Content
Preface
Chapter 1: Logomachy
Chapter 2: Ambuscado
Chapter 3: Axalax
Chapter 4: The Whirling Wheel
Chapter 5: Fox at School
Chapter 6: Cloud City
Chapter 7: Sift
Chapter 8: Angel
Chapter 9: Mimema
Chapter 10: Model Houses
Chapter 11: El Caballero Blanco
Chapter 12: Axel at School
Chapter 13: A Book Burning
Chapter 14: The Happening
Chapter 15: Anti-Earth
Chapter 16: Gay Moloch
Chapter 17: The Aleph
Chapter 18: Ur
About the author
STEFAN MATTESSICH is the author of four works of fiction: Point Guard, a coming-of-age story set on the Northern California coast of Mendocino; East Brother, a comic novel about gentrification and the end of the counterculture in a fictional California beach town; A Precarious Man, a literary novel about life in contemporary neoliberal society; and The Riverbed, about three imaginative young people coming to learn about the darker sides of the suburban dream they call home. The Riverbed is the recipient of a Literary Titan Book Award. He has also published a monograph on the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, called Lines of Flight. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
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