Forgiving the Unforgivable in the New Book “The River Is Waiting”

At the end of 2022, an estimated 5,407,300 persons were under the supervision of adult correctional systems in the United States (Buehler et al., 2024). From federal, state, local, and tribal correctional facilities across the country, the criminal justice system includes juvenile correctional facilities, women’s prisons, immigration detention facilities, military prisons, and even state psychiatric hospitals, a massive system that costs the U.S. at least $182 billion each year (Sawyer & Wagner, 2025).

About two in five people who are currently incarcerated have a history of mental illness, a rate twice as high as the national average, but data reveals that prison is designed for punishment, not care (NAMI, 2024). Suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails, making a call for adequate, timely mental health care an important part of criminal justice system reform (Wang, 2021).

According to the Restorative Justice Council, in a randomized control trial in which victims elected to participate in face-to-face meetings with the offender and a trained restorative justice facilitator 85% of victims were satisfied with the process, and 78% would recommend it to other people in their situation. Restorative justice led to a 14% reduction in the rate of re-offending and was financially cost-saving (Restorative Justice Council, 2016).

With the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate in the world, and the highest recidivism rate, with one study showing that as many as 66% of people released from prison are re-arrested, a turn to widespread restorative justice practices is worth considering (Antenangeli & Durose, 2021).

In Wally Lamb’s latest novel, The River Is Waiting, Oprah’s book club pick this month, Lamb draws upon his experiences as a volunteer writing instructor working with incarcerated women to shed light on the complexities of incarceration, forgiveness, and second chances.

Q: Share a bit about your background and what inspired you to write The River Is Waiting.

Wally Lamb (WL): Two things triggered my writing of River. The first was a disturbing article I read about the prevalence of “back-over” accidents whereby an adult (usually a parent) backs a car over a young child not visible in the rear-view mirror. Our first grandchild was a toddler at the time, and I think I was confronting my fear for his safety.

The second trigger was what I had learned during my 20-year stint as a volunteer writing teacher working with incarcerated women. What my students said and wrote about gave me the gift of a more in-depth understanding of how and why people end up in prison and what happens once they get there. When my character, Corby Ledbetter, is sentenced to prison, I was able to imagine some of what he would be up against.

Q: Research boasts many mental health and physical health benefits of offering forgiveness – decreasing anxiety, depression, and anger, and increasing self-esteem and hopefulness, even lowering the risk of heart attack and improving sleep – but there’s a lack of inquiry into the benefits of being on the receiving end of forgiveness. How does seeking forgiveness impact your character, Corby? What does being forgiven mean for him?

WL: Inebriated and zoned out on anti-anxiety medication, Corby causes the terrible accident that kills his two-year-old son, but the tragedy also “untwins” his surviving daughter, and devastates his wife, Emily. Throughout the novel, he longs for Emily’s withheld forgiveness and struggles to forgive himself.

To make amends, he declines to use the legal loophole that might have kept him out of prison. In prison, he works on his sobriety, mentors a troubled teenage inmate, and seeks redemption through his art. Does Corby deserve the forgiveness he seeks? I challenge readers to answer that question for themselves.

Q: Corby makes a big mistake in The River Is Waiting. One study showed that failure can heighten anxiety and depression for some, while others who are more emotionally resilient, having higher self-esteem and lower perfectionistic tendencies, seem less affected by the impacts of failure. How does failure shape your characters’ lives in this book?

WL: To better understand the character I was creating, I needed to build him a backstory. That was when I discovered he’d been raised by a distant and critical father and a mother who relied on cannabis and alternative spirituality to cope with her unhappy marriage. When adult Corby loses his job, he feels like a failure because he cannot live up to his father’s expectations of how men should define themselves and, like his mother, he begins to self-medicate to numb the pain of his low self-esteem.

Q: Corby struggles to survive incarceration, buoyed by small acts of kindness offered by the prison librarian and a few fellow inmates with whom he finds friendship. Some research points to the idea that incarceration is ineffective in reducing future crimes, and actually perpetuates or worsens inmates’ mental health symptoms. What are your thoughts on the efficacy of the criminal justice system after writing this book? Do you think there is room for a more restorative approach?

WL: One of my inmate students, Tabatha, wrote about the time she attended the sentencing hearing for a man who had murdered her brother. “Once you get in there, don’t waste your time. You’re there for a reason. Fix yourself!” Tabatha knew firsthand that rehabilitative programs in prisons can only go so far; they can only help those who commit to change, then do the heavy lifting of “fixing” themselves.

Speaking about the punitive policies of America’s prisons, Robin, another imprisoned student, made the point that the majority of those incarcerated suffer from emotional sickness and that “you can’t beat someone well.” I am troubled by the inherent racism of the American justice system and, at some institutions, the paucity of mental health programs and the priority to punish. I believe alternatives to incarceration are more effective (and less costly) than prison in helping to rehabilitate individuals who will rejoin society once they’re released.

Q: What stood out to you most in the process of writing this book?

WL: I came of age in the 1960s—the era when young people protested the war and fought for civil rights. Perhaps we were naïvely optimistic in assuming we knew what was wrong with our country and could fix it. What stood out to me while I was writing River was that, in my seventies now, I have yet to abandon my fighting spirit or my feeling that our country’s failures need to be addressed.

In most of my novels, I’m interested in investigating the abuse of power, whether it’s perpetrated by the violent spouse, the vengeful politician, the racist justice system, or in this story, two bullying corrections officers. In a conversation I once had with an astute commissioner of corrections, he described three types of prison guards: those who remain neutral about the offenders they supervise, those who recognize the inmates’ humanity and treat them fairly, and those who became officers for the wrong reasons. In The River Is Waiting, I attempted to characterize each of these three types.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from spending time with The River Is Waiting?

WL: I’m not interested in controlling what readers take away from this novel. While I was writing it, it was mine. Now that it’s published, it’s theirs. Readers should feel free to take from it whatever might be useful to them in broadening their understanding of this complicated world.