Downriver: A Tale of Moving Pictures Before Hollywood

Behind the Scenes at the Birth of the Movies

Anne Blackstone is a sixteen year old girl from a small town on the banks of the Missouri River at the turn of the twentieth century. Anne is the sworn enemy of the Church Ladies, black-clad members of the Ladies’ Aid Society, who run an institution for orphans and homeless children. After the death of her father in a barge explosion, Anne lives with her ailing mother in the town’s poorest district, The Meadows.

The Orphan’s Revenge

Upon the death of her mother, Anne is sent to the Home for Orphans run by the Church Ladies. With the aid of a waterfront madam, Ann escapes the Home, leaves town with the company of a traveling showboat, and later joins a touring motion picture exhibitor. Along the way, she learns the craft of directing: for the stage, then for the infant industry of moving pictures, pre-Hollywood. She enters the field before it becomes a big business, when motion picture language was being written, and when women, even from a lower class, had access to its creative tools.

With a cast of strong characters, both real and imaginary, Downriver gives readers the experience of what it was like to be alive at the origins of an industry which is, today, so much a part of our lives.