River of Bones

River Full of Bones delves under the water's surface to offer a glimpse of family history and social history. Time's insistence shows itself in what the backyard holds, what the river carries, and in the lives of young women who worked in the nineteenth century cotton mills. The author is indebted to the Lowell National Historical Park where she first stood listening to the looms roar, and to Lucy Larcom, Harriet Robinson, and others whose writings brought the period to life. The author was fortunate to have a family book that traced one ancestor back to the seventeenth century.