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Dean Ream can claim his place among the best storytellers that capture and teach us.  Though In the River’s Mist is set in the Ozarks a century ago, the tales and lessons Ream bestows so eloquently are universal in time and place.

"It didn’t matter if they (Preacher’s stories) were true or not.  I never doubted they weren’t.  What good would it do?  The events of our lives are embellished by our own emotions and without those feelings there are no stories.”

We become a part of the lives of the characters in Ream’s stories, sitting with them around the fire with our fishing pole dangling in the river.  We share their familial atmosphere and put the book aside only to discover we have found new, lifelong friends.

   “For me, loneliness is not knowing who your friends are. The politics of stature is as obnoxious as a fly in pudding; you can’t eat around it; you must swallow it or throw it all away.”

To read Ream’s book is to grow, to evolve into a new viewpoint, to laugh aloud and experience pleasure, to perceive our existence in a transformed and elevated way.

   “We came to the conclusion that in order to make a law, you first had to consider yourself above it, so you could look down on it and pass judgment.  But we contented ourselves with the work at hand, letting the trappings of the growing bureaucracy fend for itself.”

Thank you for writing In the River’s Mist, Dean.  We would be diminished if you had not.

Joel M. Robinson

Executive Director

Marmot Library Network, Inc.

In Dean Ream’s debut novel, “In the River’s Mist,” narrator, Claude Ghetter recounts the story of the people of Dogleg, a small community in the Ozark hills, a place as yet untouched by “progress”.  As Claude’s story begins, a fire has swept through the mountains on both sides of the river.  Six disparate people come together to rebuild their homes, but as the story unfolds, they choose to remain together during the tragic as well as the comic events of their lives.

Yet, the narrative is more than a story of friendship; it’s the story of a way of life and a fiercely independent people who lived in the hills and hollers of the Ozarks at the end of the 1800s and 1900s—a time before the area was touched by “progress”, when life was hard, but when “folks kept their humor about them.

Kathy Funk,

Community Volunteer

“Dean Ream’s eccentric and oh-so-believable characters and their antics in fictitious Dogleg, Ark., made me laugh out loud…Ream’s observations about people are so keen, his storytelling so vivid and mesmerizing, you’ll be searching the Arkansas map to see if there really is a Dogleg, and how long it would take to get there.”

Kathleen O’Dell

The News-Leader, (Springfield, MO)

“This is a fascinating story of the Ozarks of the past.  Filled with laughter, pathos, self-caused predicaments, human frailties, and creativity." 

Ruth Elliott

Former president of Springfield Chapter of the Missouri Writer’s Guild