Complete Guide to Long Bright River by Liz Moore: Summary, Review and Book Club Questions (+ PDF Download)

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Long Bright River Book Summary

Long Bright River is a literary mystery that tells the story of the opioid crisis in Philadelphia through one family. The book primarily focuses on two sisters who are on two different sides of the crisis: Mickey and Kacey. Mickey is a cop in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, where opioid use is rampant. And Kacey is a drug addict who lives on the streets that Mickey patrols.

When the book opens, Mickey and her new partner are called to a scene where a woman was found dead. Mickey immediately fears that it might be her sister (it’s not). Given the fact that “the city is on track for 1,200” overdose deaths for the year, the initial assumption is that a drug overdose is the cause of death. But as they examine the victim a little closer, there are signs that the woman died of strangulation, which means it’s likely a homicide case.

As the book unfolds, we learn that Mickey and Kacey are estranged, but we don’t know why. We also learn that Kacey has a son. We also start to learn why Mickey and Kacey ended up going down such different paths. Moore does this by periodically taking readers back to the past and revealing events from their childhoods that got them to this point.

Beyond the opioid crisis, this book also explores police brutality, police corruption, sexual abuse, community, family dynamics, and survival in harsh world.

Long Bright River Book Review

This book was a solid five star read for me. The thing that makes me love a book is when I care deeply about the characters and there is enough going on in the plot to make me want to keep reading. I also love when an author can make me care about a topic I previously knew very little about. I also love when a book is simply well-written. By well-written, I don’t mean they include lots of five dollar words, but that the writing is clear and tight and no word feels wasted. Liz Moore does all of those things in Long Bright River.

While summaries about this book (including mine above) make it sound like this book is about two sisters, the primary focus of the story is Mickey. When we first meet Mickey, she comes across like a pretty tough, no-nonsense type of woman and cop. But as the story unfolds, we start to see her vulnerabilities, and we learn about the various people in her life and how they helped shape her. We also get to watch her grow as a person.

Something I don’t like in a book is when an author shows a character going through hell or lots of trials, but there’s no justice or redemption. One of the reasons I loved this book is because this book is full of justice and redemption. This didn’t happen in a perfect, unrealistic way, but in a way that the book ends with the characters on a path of transformation.

Length and the Structure

This book is almost 500 pages, but I did not feel for one moment that it dragged on. The book is broken up into short chapters, which I think helped with the pacing. Sometimes authors lose me when they go and forth between the past and present, but the book manages to insert episodes from that past in those moments when you are craving more context. In other words, the episodes from the past added to the main storyline, they didn’t detract from it, or slow it down. 

I thought the book was well written with clear, understandable language. Moore does a good job of avoiding overly-flowery language. (I think that’s why even though the book is long, it doesn’t feel unnecessarily long.)  

Something unique about the format of this book is that Moore does not include quotation marks. (How do you feel about that?) Honestly, this was my first book (at least that I can remember) that does that. 

For me, it gave the book almost a dream-like quality, but I also found it frustrating at times. While most of the time, it was clear who was talking and what was a quote and what wasn’t. There were times when I couldn’t tell if something was being said or if it was a thought. That’s the part that was frustrating. 

You can tell that this story is personal for Moore. “Like many families in the United States, mine has been affected by a multi-generational struggle with addiction that continues to this day,” she wrote on her website. 

She includes two chapters in the book called “List.” In these chapters are names of real people that Moore knew or friends or family members of friends who died from an addiction. On that list she includes her own mother and father.

Reading Notes, Content Warnings, and Facts

• Content Warnings: sexual assault, sexual abuse, prostitution, drug overdose
• Book of the Month pick in December 2019 (This is where I got mine!)
• Good Morning America Book Club Pick 
• Long Bright River is currently being made into a TV series that is scheduled to be released on Peacock sometime this year. It will star Amanda Seyfried as Mickey. Moore is one of the writers on the show, which I’m sure will help to preserve the story

Long Bright River FAQs

Is Long Bright River a true story?

Long Bright River is not a true story, but it is inspired by real people and real places. This is what Moore says in a letter on her website about her inspiration for the book:

“There are a few different sources of inspiration for Long Bright River. The first is somewhat autobiographical. Like many families in the United States, mine has been affected by a multi-generational struggle with addiction that continues to this day. My second source of inspiration for Long Bright River is more recent. In 2009, I worked on a photo-essay about the neighborhood of Kensington with a photographer friend who was making portraits of its residents. Following that experience, I found myself returning to the neighborhood again and again to talk to its residents and learn more. I began doing community work, running free writing workshops for women at a day shelter in the neighborhood.”

Where is Long Bright River set?

Long Bright River is set in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. It is located in the lower Northeast of the city and is part of the River Wards area of the city, which is a group of neighborhoods that sit close to the Delaware River that separate Pennsylvania from New Jersey.

Is Long Bright River a movie?

Long Bright River is not a movie, but it is currently being made into a TV series that will star Amanda Seyfried as Mickey. It is scheduled to be released sometime in 2024 on Peacock. Moore is one of the writers for the show along with Nikki Toscano.

What is the Long Bright River meaning in the book?

There are three places in the book when the meaning of “Long Bright River” is explored, which gives the term multiple meanings, in my opinion.

The first comes in an epitaph at the beginning of the book, which is an excerpt from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, “The Lotus Eaters”, from the seventh stanza of the Choric Song:

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)

With half-dropt eyelid still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hill—

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine—

To watch the emerald-colour’d water falling

Thro’ many a wov’n acanthus-wreath divine!

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine.

The second comes early in the book (p. 28 of the hardcover) when Mickey is remembering a scenario from the past from the first time she found her sister nearly dead from a drug overdose. In this case Long Bright River refers to the vein in her arm: 

“Below this makeshift tourniquet: the long bright river of her vein.”

The third comes from one of the lists of real life victims (p. 467 of the hardcover), and Moore ends that list with this: 

“People with promise, people dependent and depended upon, people loving and beloved, one after another, in a line, in a river, no fount and no outlet, a long bright river of departed souls.”

How does Long Bright River end?

[SPOILER ALERT – THIS ANSWER CONTAINS SPOILERS]

While I don’t want to give away all the details, Long Bright River ends with reconciliation between the two sisters. The cop who was killing the girls they keep finding is discovered. Kacey has a baby, and Mickey leaves the police force. 

Long Bright River Character List

This is not an exhaustive list, but the main characters we meet throughout the book.