Things we needed things we didn"t, for the nerve of it, the anger, the need. But sooner or later, we all got caught. Then it was, When are .

             you going to learn?" .

             Allison"s characters are based on her own poor southern family. She managed to escape the fate that destroyed so many generations of this family through her own stubborn determination for survival and by writing as a way to fight back. By writing this story as fictions it provides her the necessary distance to grasp the purity of the characters without being overly sentimental. In that aspect her characters are not one-dimensional and it is because of this autobiographical pretense that some of the images are so horrifying. .

             One detestable mental picture is given by her choice of title for this story. " River of Names" is informing the reader there are more names of family members than one can possibly remember. She then continues on to parallel the family to tadpoles and that no one would notice if one were missing from time to time. This concept is further demonstrated by the narrator trying to list the method of death that each lost one went through. One did this, one did that, one fell in the river, one ran away, etc. The list seems almost endless. This does not include any of the individual incidents that are then told. The people in these tales do get names and the reader is swamped with many different names and different tragedies all more horrifying than the previous tale. In every paragraph there are truths and deaths, plenty of accidents, sickness and sorrow and there is life. .

             Another reason Allison gives for her survival is that she is a lesbian and she incorporates this homosexuality into her story as well. The narrator has a lover, Jessie whom she loves deeply. Her relationship with Jesse seems to be used as a contrast and also as a relief between some of the appalling events that are told. Jessie is portrayed as having a fairy tale adolescence.