by Lindsey Clark
That award-winning author Henry Rivers originally went to school to become a history teacher is no surprise considering his deep love of learning and facilitating a capacity for wonder in his work. When Rivers realized his passion for artistic creation above all else, whether it be songs, stories, or poems, Rivers pivoted more fully to this path, so much so that together with his partner Amy, the couple decided that their art would be their children. “I was very lucky to grow up in a nurturing family working in the arts that loved books. Maybe that factor, looking back now, has been the biggest influence,” Rivers reflects. “Creative osmosis.”
As the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize winner for his debut literary fiction novel, A Summer for Moths, Rivers has slightly departed from “the intersection of the spooky and the nerdy” that he engages with under the pen name J.R. Potter. His middle grade and young adult work under this name, he points out, “reflect that love of being a student, learning for learning’s sake, a capacity for wonder” that serves as a throughline for all his endeavors.
Reading as much as he can get his hands on and relishing the opportunity to be a student for his whole life, Rivers extends great care to his creative development, from the meter and syntax to the content and degree of self-confession. These elements, and his capacity for artistic exploration, make up the “ingredients” of his creative identity. “The child/zen beginner’s mind is a great mindset to have whether writing books for young readers or older audiences,” Rivers explains. “It’s open country. You’re always searching for new means of expression. New paths to something incredible.”
When J.R. Potter becomes Henry Rivers
As writer and illustrator of the Thomas Creeper series, including the titles Thomas Creeper and the Gloomsbury Secret and Thomas Creeper and the Purple Corpse, Rivers reflects his early adoration of fantastical Gothic mystery author John Bellairs and his illustration partner Edward Gorey. This amalgamation of the creepy and academic continues in J.R. Potter’s forthcoming middle grade title, which brings together STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and the vibes of a classic Hollywood monster film.
When Potter turns into Rivers, he can unleash a deeper investigation of his interests, and delve into darker, more intense material, including adult themes like horror, romance, and screenwriting. This makes for an intense creative experience for Rivers as well, and he muses that he plans to take this more extreme authorial alter ego in moderate doses. “In essence, Henry Rivers is me if I wasn’t responsible with jobs and went full tilt, a total Mad Monk of Art or a screenwriter hiding out in a ramshackle hotel somewhere in the affordable section of L.A. (I know, it doesn’t exist),” jokes Rivers.
To write as Henry Rivers requires, in part, talking to ghosts. Taking a page from the books of his idols, those musicians and visual artists who constantly evolved in their craft, Rivers explains how creators can make a living by interacting with the voices in your head and figments of your imagination.
“For better or worse, I think it’s in my nature to constantly chase after something new instead of reworking something old,” he admits. “With writing and illustrating, I often start out in a bit of a mad daze and then that rush of blood to the head dissipates, and soon I’m staring at something that’s pretty raw and fragile, but also potentially magical. My rational brain then has to take the wheel, so things don’t fall apart.”
Developing A Summer for Moths
While much of Moths was crafted by showcasing its characters and letting them tell the story themselves, Rivers describes the novel as a confessional, a lost piece just as F. Scott Fitzgerald belonged to the “lost generation”—an especially important connection because of Moths’ relation to The Great Gatsby and its themes. Rivers explains that reading the classic text in high school did not inspire him much. But when he revisited Gatsby about five years ago, he was hooked, “becoming obsessed with the story and its reservoir of feeling, especially romance, a romance which is ultimately deadly,” he says.
As a self-proclaimed anachronist, Romantic in the Beethoven sense of the word, and a fan of Chet Baker (of “Let’s Get Lost” fame), Rivers feels a pull to the past, a nourishment from “all those fleeting and complicated summers of [his] youth,” and yet a recognition that much remains the same. “I think we are living in a bit of a blip, a time warp,” he muses. “In the hundred years since The Great Gatsby hit shelves so much has changed and nothing has changed. The tech bros are the new/old robber barons. You can still die in your swimming pool like Gatsby, but now it will become the most-watched reel of the week. Until next week.”
The lyricism and thrilling nature of Moths, as well as the place-based imagery of the Long Island Sound, makes clear the Gatsby inspirations. Rivers adds, though, that a key component of the novel, which resonates with Fitzgerald’s text, is desire as “the main engine.” Being in the room with the characters, listening to their desires and seeing just how far they are willing to take them, even at the cost of themselves and others, lies at the book’s core. Rivers adds that he examines “[d]esire in all its forms: noble, beautiful, destructive, and redemptive. I think that’s a feeling that aligns with Fitzgerald’s work, particularly Jay Gatsby’s desire for redemption and his quixotic, ineffable dream of rewriting the past.”
An entrancing creative process
When it comes to his actual writing process, Rivers observes that much remains the same on a logistical level whether he is writing as Potter or Rivers. Importantly, the story takes a hold of him as he writes, a sort of trance that can sometimes be so captivating that he cannot escape it. “There’s a gravity to a story when you’re locked in,” he illustrates. “And you’re lucky when that happens because it’s writing itself.”
It is ultimately a close interaction with the characters in Moths that allowed Rivers to tap into their personalities, idiosyncrasies, and motivations. But he emphasizes the importance of letting the characters do their thing, rather than trying hard to control the outcome. “With Moths,” Rivers describes, “I wrote myself into the room with those characters, listening to the cadence of their voices, how they confessed their secret selves. I think that’s the most important part of striving to be a good writer: put yourself in the way of something powerful (drama)…and then get out of the way.”
Indeed, this allows Rivers, as he puts it, to “stay awake” for those unexpected moments that might strike him during the writing process so that he can let the story truly unleash. “There’s a real film quality to Moths from the very first line,” says Rivers. “I spent all of last year writing a screenplay and unpacking the best ones I could get my hands on. I think I’m trying to do a mash of fiction and cinema in Moths.”
Diving into the world of Booth Baker
The story of A Summer for Moths takes place, like Gatsby, on the Long Island Sound, steeped in the vibes of a New England summer. This place-based essence of the story is fueled by Rivers’ having been raised in the New England area from the age of three to 10.
“Most people would say that’s a blip, but that’s the most foundational time for an artist. All my deepest impressions come from that time: nature, joy, family, music, world-building taught through books and video games. I’m so grateful to live here in the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains but there’s a sea inside me that’s always reaching out for New England,” he ponders. “And, as a musician, it feels weirdly prophetic to grow up next to something referred to as The Sound.”
Indeed, music is another major component of Rivers’ personal life as a musician himself and greatly informs the foundations of Moths. The bluegrass, alternative country sound is where he finds himself at home as a songwriter and performer, Rivers refers to as “genres [he’s] swam in like rivers.” The universality of music and the especially personal nature of these sounds are woven into the lives of Moths main character Booth Baker and his brother, Duane. The brothers’ performances together not only construct a key part of the narrative but also serve as the undercurrent of their complicated family dynamic.
Between the guilt he feels for past pain he has inflicted, and the traumatic discontent of his family life, Booth Baker is, above all else, running from his past. It is not until he crosses paths with the carefree and subtly luxurious Abby that a shift takes place. Their love and attraction bring about a connection so deep that it becomes something only they could possibly understand in each other. “I think the complexity exists in the idea that someone else can fix us – save us,” reflects Rivers. “Booth and Abby’s relationship seems to be less about being saved as it is about dissolving into a new identity together, a wild liminal thing where the trauma is real and defining, but also part of their evolving hope for a possible future together, a kind of beautiful oblivion.”
Furthermore, with Duane by Booth’s side, there is an added complexity to Booth’s life, as the brotherly bond brings both tension and familial comfort, obstacles and answers. “Duane was both easy and extremely difficult for me to write,” he explains. “Easy, in that his tone and cadence screamed at me from the get-go, like he had a loudspeaker up to my ear. But his subtleties, his secret pride and tenderness, that was harder to get him to talk about. He’s also a no-man’s land himself, Korean by birth, adopted into the world of the south, the last caretaker for his belligerent preacher father.”
Rivers acknowledges that playing music together is the only time the siblings can truly exist in harmony, and because it is only through Booth’s perspective that we get to know Duane, it is important to remember the complexity of their brotherhood and Duane’s background throughout the story.
Unpacking the meaning of Moths
The novel sources its power from intense, sometimes unexpected moments that truly raise the stakes. Rivers acknowledges that the “spooky serendipities” unraveled in the tale speak to a greater “need compassionate leaders and true, nuanced works of fiction that inspire acts of greater compassion.”
The book is concerned with ideas of terrible violence and abuse, but particularly, what lengths a person can go to in order to prevent the continuation of those actions. In hindsight, Rivers confesses that when writing the novel, he may have been able to get so close to Booth during pivotal scenes because the author has himself learned about someone close to him suffering from abuse.
“It took me long after I wrote the last line of the story to understand I was, like Gatsby, believing I can change the past to some degree, to write a better What If version,” asserts Rivers. “Given the chance and a time machine, what would I have done to punish the agent of that abuse? Would I commit a violent act to end more violent acts? What would be the ripple effect of those terrible actions? Would that be honorable? Virtuous? Would that cancel out all the damage already done?”
These questions propel the plot forward and make for sobering twists and turns that make Moths difficult to put down. Rivers hopes that Moths reaches everyone it possibly can, but particularly those who are feeling a bit blocked or lost. The difficulty of being human is real, he points out, but he loves to tell stories in order to ask questions and hear from readers about their answers.
Rivers dedicates A Summer for Moths to his parents and expresses his gratitude to Leapfrog editor Nicole Schroeder for her work on the title. To the readers, he expresses, “I hope the take-away is it’s all worth it, all of it. The dreams and the struggles. They ground us all into some crazy beautiful diamonds.”
To order your copy of Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize winner “A Summer for Moths”, written by Henry Rivers, please go to leapfrogpress.com/book/a-summer-for-moths/. To learn more about Henry Rivers and his range of projects, please visit jrpotterbooks.com. Keep up with him on Instagram @henryriversbooks and @allbooksbuildbridges.
