Based on entirely anecdotal evidence, it seems like most bookish children go through an Egyptology phase. Author Isabel Ibañez certainly did, and now she has written a gift to those of us who tried to write our names in hieroglyphics in fifth grade. What the River Knows, the first novel in the Secrets of the Nile duology, is narrated by another young person obsessed with Egypt, nineteen year old Inez Olivera. Though Inez is a high society Bolivian Argentinian heiress living in 1884, her craving to learn everything she can about pharaohs and their tombs is warmly recognizable.
Yet Inez’s fascination does not originate with a colorful history project or a field trip to a Western museum full of pilfered artifacts. It comes from her parents, who for the past seventeen years have spent half their lives in Egypt. They’ve never brought Inez with them, telling her it is too dangerous, and shower her in Egyptian gifts instead. Some of these presents are magical in nature, as in Inez’s world the power of spellcasting has been lost but magical echoes remain, caught in objects. One such item is the last gift Inez’s father sent her, a golden ring that makes Inez taste roses and see the memories of an Egyptian woman long ago. However, even this offering cannot make up for the long months while Inez is stashed with her aunt and two cousins while her parents disappear to the other side of the world. At the moment she most hopes her mother and father will at last change their minds and invite her to join them, a letter arrives telling Inez that her parents are dead.
Ibañez sidesteps the repressive world of young socialite women in the 1880s by making Inez a headstrong and resourceful heroine. Devastated by grief and suspicious of the story that her knowledgeable and careful parents just wandered into the desert and were lost, Inez books herself a voyage to Alexandria. She ducks the issue of traveling without a chaperone by dressing in black and pretending to be a widow, and arrives in Egypt ready to be greeted by her uncle, now her legal guardian. However, Inez’s Tío Ricardo is absent, sending instead his handsome and mysterious assistant to put his niece right back on the next ship to Buenos Aires. Dedicated to her mission, Inez abandons her luggage at the port and gets herself on a train to Cairo. Although her golden ring, revealed to be inscribed with the cartouche of Cleopatra, is stolen from her on the journey, Inez arrives at the hotel her parents always stayed at. In the dining room, she at last finds her uncle—right in the middle of a contentious conversation with two statesmen about Britain’s dominion over Egypt. Needless to say, Ricardo is not pleased to see his new charge.
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What the River Knows
Though her Tío attempts to send her back to Argentina at every turn, Inez quickly learns there is much more to her parents’ work in Egypt—and their deaths—than meets the eye. That handsome British assistant, Mr. Whitford Hayes, is tasked with keeping Inez under lock and key, but turns out to be more sympathetic to her than she expected. She finds clues, discovers another object with a magical signature akin to Cleopatra’s ring, and realizes Ricardo is at the center of the dangerous battle to keep Egyptian artifacts in Egyptian hands. Inez cannot trust anyone, but she swears to find Cleopatra’s tomb and get the answers she seeks.
The ensuing adventure is thrilling, laced with betrayal, twists, delicate magic, and of course, romance. If the burgeoning love story between Inez and Whit is typical and a bit thin, the rest of the plot more than makes up for it. The pace of What the River Knows is impressively balanced, always tense but never breakneck, and Ibañez excels at allowing her reader to discover the truth only as quickly as Inez can. A bullish and at times foolishly impulsive character, Inez makes things happen and forces the plot forward; in this heroine, Ibañez has captured a true image of a frustrated, precocious, and grieving nineteen year old. It is powerful to see Inez with so much agency, and it is moving when she must confront the consequences of that agency.
In addition to crafting a terrific protagonist, Ibañez has done a beautiful job of conjuring late 19th century Egypt, from its stunning environment to its bustling cities to its colonization by greedy Europeans. The trade in valuable antiquities is cut-throat enough to end in murder, which the author doesn’t sugarcoat. Whether British and French officials are thieving Egypt’s heritage through official channels or through smuggler’s markets, the tide of loss is impossible to stem, placing Inez, Ricardo, and their crew in a precarious position. It is satisfying to read a narrative where it is clear that Westerners are the true tomb raiders, and root for a small group of people racing against the colonialist clock.
Like the famous archeological adventure tales that What the Rivers Knows both invokes and subverts, the supernatural is central. Ibañez’s system of magic is quiet and light, often hiding in the background, but its presence is key to Inez’s role in the dangerous machinations around her. The author’s unusual commitment to an unshowy version of magic is compelling, rendering it as omnipresent and uncontrollable as the environment.
For everyone who is or has ever been an youthful Egypt nerd, What the River Knows is exciting and delightful. For anyone with no attachment to Isis or canopic jars, give it a try anyway. It just might spark a new curiosity about the pyramids, and the people who made them.
What the River Knows is published by Wednesday Books.
Maura Krause is a writer and Barrymore-nominated theatrical director, currently pursuing their MFA in Writing at California College for the Arts.
