The River at Night

The River at Night is a thriller by the American writer Erica Ferencik, published in 2017. It is set in the Allagash Wilderness in Maine, and it begins as a holiday and stops being one quite quickly.

Wini and her friends have been taking a trip together every year for a long time, and the habit has survived the changes in their lives. This year the proposal is more demanding than usual, and Wini, who is more fragile than she lets on, goes along with it because the alternative is to be the one who says no.

An accident on the water leaves the four of them stranded and separated from their raft and from everything they brought to survive with. When darkness comes they see a fire on a mountainside and make for it, which is how they meet the people who are camped there. The novel follows the night and the days that follow, and the tension comes from the fact that the four women have known each other for decades and still cannot agree on what kind of people they have walked into.