Anne Blackstone is a sixteen year old girl who has grown up in Marion, a small town on the banks of the Missouri River at the turn of the twentieth century. After the death of her father in a barge explosion, Anne lives with her ailing mother in the poorest, riverfront district of the town, "The Meadows." Noticeably brighter than her classmates at school, she is still held back from social and work opportunities because of her poverty. Anne is the sworn enemy of the "Church Ladies," black-clad members of the Ladies' Aid Society, who run a school for orphans and homeless children in Marion. A loner at heart, she's happiest in the company of her waterfowl on the banks of the river, or staying up nights listening to rivermen's stories at Fantine's, a waterfront bar and gambling emporium run by her best adult friend, the proprietress of the establishment. After her mother's death, the Ladies Aid Society obtain a court order to admit the orphan Anne Blackstone to their school. She is assigned to be a ward to the younger orphans, overseeing them at bedtime, mealtimes and on walks through their town of Marion. The owners of the Children's Home groom Anne to be a teacher. Miss Hutchins, the school's president, trusts Anne and has great plans for her. Anne 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. 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.
