A LIGHT ON THE MAGDALENA

Preston’s novel follows a family of Christian missionaries in Colombia during the 1960s.

It’s 1963, and Ellie Peters’ family spends most of that decade preaching to the pueblos on the shores of the Magdalena, the river that traverses Colombia. Ellie’s father, William, is an English missionary and believes the Magdalena is their own Garden of Eden; he travels up and down the river preaching the gospel. The Peterses are a loving, tight-knit family, and Ellie is closest to her father. She loves listening to him orate, and the expectation is that she will one day become a missionary wife herself. But on her 12th birthday, homeschooled Ellie receives two books that will change her life: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Learning about slavery and Nazism transforms her thinking and leads to many questions—about her world, her family’s beliefs, and the people she knows (“Perhaps all those German Christians who’d seen Jews being taken away had prayed, asking God for peace, for reconciliation. But then they must’ve looked away and done nothing”). Preston’s tale of awakening is told by a younger Ellie in the 1960s and an older, more reflective Ellie who returns to Colombia in 1978 and reminisces about her early years. It’s a nuanced, atmospheric narrative that shines when depicting Ellie’s philosophical realizations or considering family, feminism, and Christianity. But lengthy monologues and awkward dialogue get in the way of the storytelling. Still, Ellie’s metamorphosis is believably and interestingly portrayed.

A ruminative, philosophical, but longwinded novel.