In this “brutal and beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review) fantasy, a boy on the cusp of adulthood sets out to find the cure for his father’s curse and faces death, alchemy, and madness along the way.

“Woven of threads and snippets of fantasy and myth, Riverkeep presents something entirely unique and innovative.”—VOYA

“A rare work that feels like a sophisticated, gritty folktale, full of impossibilities and dramatic tension . . . both hilarious and tragic in equal measure.”—BCCB, starred review

One boy. One boat. One epic journey.

The Danék is a wild, treacherous river and Wulliam Fobisher’s family are the ones who tend it—clearing away ice and weed so boats can get through, and fishing corpses from its bleak depths. Wulliam’s father is proud to be Riverkeep. Wull dreams of a different life. But in one week he will come of age and must take his father’s place.

Then the unthinkable happens. While recovering a drowned man, Wull’s father is pulled under—and when he emerges, he is no longer himself. A dark spirit has taken possession of his body and mind, devouring him from the inside. In an instant, Wull is Riverkeep. And not only must he tend the river, he must tend his father, too.

When he learns that a cure for his father lurks in the body of a great sea-dwelling beast known as the mormorach, Wull embarks on an epic journey down the river that his family has so long protected—but never explored. Along the way, he faces death more than once, meets people and creatures touched by magic and madness and alchemy, and grows from boy to man.