Downriver
Memoir of a Warrior Poet
With fascinating peeks into military life and work on Wall Street, Downriver is a revealing memoir.
Ryan McDermott’s introspective memoir Downriver is about the personal costs of military service and success on Wall Street.
McDermott was born to a single mother, and his childhood was marked by financial instability and the pain of his father’s absence. Driven by a desire to overcome this adversity, McDermott completed both school at West Point and the grueling Army Ranger program. He also realized his desire for family, marrying his high school crush and having three children.
When the aftermath of 9/11 sent McDermott to serve in Iraq, separating him from his family, it created a personal turmoil. This continued when McDermott later began a career with a Wall Street firm that imploded in the 2008 financial crisis.
Fascinating details from McDermott’s life as a soldier are included, such as that the whistle of a bullet reaches one’s ears before the bang of exploding gunpowder. The enormous loss of life in the Iraq War is also covered with skill. Relating a plant-a-tree program to honor soldiers killed in action, McDermott writes:
Never did we think we would lose so many heroes in Iraq. What began as an open field meant for celebratory marches slowly transitioned into a forest—hallowed ground for mourning and remembrance.
However, the storytelling falters as the book moves from McDermott’s childhood into his adult years. Scenes are included to show the difficulty of training and the camaraderie of army life, but they work as swift examples instead of being developed as pivotal moments in the story’s advancement. The re-created conversations are also unnatural in tone, used to convey information such as what roads people are driving on; people’s voices sound too formal, as they speak without contractions and with elevated syntax.
In addition, the book glosses over moments of emotional significance. Its attention to military life and Wall Street overwhelms its personal elements, bogging its progression down and limiting its emotive reach. For example, less than a page is devoted to McDermott’s marriage and the delivery of his firstborn child, in which an army commander granting McDermott leave has the only lines of dialogue. The book attempts to flesh out its emotional landscape through the inclusion of personal poems, but its moves between narrative and poetry are more interruptive than illuminative.
The avocational memoir Downriver covers the Iraq War and the Great Recession from a personal perspective. Its peeks into worlds that the general public has little access to are captivating.
Reviewed by
Carolyn Wilson-Scott
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
