SOURCE: “On the Susquehanna River,” in New York Herald Tribune Books, Vol. 11, No. 34, April 28, 1935, p. 4.

In the following review, Clark finds Roll River to be a “curiously moving and lovely book.”

James Boyd, though following the indisputable fashion for long novels, has accomplished his best, his most important work in Roll River. Many persons will probably be misled. Mr. Boyd springs from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and it will be thought that North Carolina and Southern Negroes inspired the title. This is not true. It is, I am sure, the Susquehanna that rolls through this book, and Midian, the upstate Pennsylvania town of his story, is quite possibly Harrisburg, which possesses one of the most beautiful streets in this country, lined with a number of rather ugly houses. River Street, of Midian, is very like Front Street, of Harrisburg, a wicked and corrupt town which, nevertheless, understands how...