Booked for Dinner

The River Is Waiting

by Wally Lamb

A dinner and discussion guide

Tonight's invitation

Come hungry. Come curious. Bring your opinions.

You don't have to agree. You don't have to have loved the book. You don't even have to know exactly what you think yet. Tonight we're making room for complicated characters, complicated choices, and really good conversation.

Spoiler note: this guide discusses the whole book, including the ending. If someone hasn't finished, stick to the First Pour and Courses One through Three.

How to use this guide

Don't try to cover all of it. Think of this as a conversation menu, not a syllabus.

Always start with the First Pour and The Passage You Kept. They get every voice in the room early.
Then follow the energy. Pick four to six courses the group naturally leans toward. If a question lands, stay there.
Drop in a game (Would You Rather or Rapid Fire) when the conversation gets heavy or dinner gets loud.
Always save the ending: What Are You Holding Differently, The River Table, and One Last Round. Together they give the night a beautiful landing.

This book touches grief, the loss of a child, addiction, and incarceration. Some guests may carry these stories personally. Every "around the table" question is an invitation, never a requirement. Passing is always welcome.

Before you come

Choose one line, scene, image, or moment from the book that stayed with you. Maybe you underlined it. Maybe it made you angry. Maybe it broke your heart. Maybe you just couldn't stop thinking about it.

Bring it to dinner.

Tonight's big idea

Sometimes a book gives us characters we admire. Sometimes it gives us characters we judge. And sometimes it gives us someone like Corby Ledbetter, a man capable of love, terrible choices, tenderness, deception, courage, addiction, responsibility, and regret.

The River Is Waiting asks us to sit with uncomfortable questions:

Can we have compassion for someone without excusing what they did?

What does accountability look like when something cannot be undone?

Can a person be more than the worst thing they have ever done?

How do we keep living when the life we thought we'd have is gone?

And perhaps most of all: what is the river waiting for?

Meet Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb writes big, emotionally honest novels about family, trauma, identity, redemption, and the ways people survive what happens to them. You may know She's Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, or We Are Water.

The real-life roots

For twenty years, from 1999 to 2019, Lamb led a writing program for incarcerated women at a maximum-security prison in Connecticut. His students' essays about addiction, race, class, crime, punishment, and the day-to-day reality of prison life shaped the world Corby enters. Lamb has said prison officials don't always want the public to see everything that happens inside, and he hopes Corby's story offers some transparency.

The addiction thread is personal, too. Lamb has shared that his own drinking became a problem in his fifties, and that he has been happily sober for well over a decade.

Where the story came from

Lamb often starts a novel by going back to old myths and folktales. This one began with the Mexican folktale of "The Weeping Woman," a ghost who wanders near water mourning the children she drowned. The novel went somewhere very different, but kept its heart: a parent mourning a child whose death he caused, who goes to the river looking for his truth.

The Wequonnoc River is fictional, modeled on the three rivers that meet in Lamb's hometown of Norwich, Connecticut. He says moving water has always unblocked him as a writer. Some of his best ideas arrive in the shower.

Three fun facts for the table

He was almost an art major. As a kid, his teachers taped bedsheet-sized paper to the classroom walls so he could paint murals during recess. He was voted "Class Artist" in high school. Sound like anyone we know?
His titles always come from music. This one is a song written by John Fogerty that Lamb first heard sung by New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas. It kept playing in his head until he realized it was his title. Then he had to answer: who or what is the river waiting for, and why?
The last line made him cry. He says the final scene wasn't planned. It arrived fully formed and moved him to tears.

On putting himself into characters, Lamb borrows an image from writer Tom Drury: take a baseball bat to a stained-glass portrait of yourself, then build a completely different portrait from the shards. There are pieces of Lamb in Corby. But Corby is his own man.

Who's who

Corby Ledbetter: Husband. Father. Artist. Addict. Prisoner. He sits at the center of the novel's biggest moral question: how do we hold accountability and compassion at the same time?
Emily: Corby's wife and Maisie's mother. She navigates grief, betrayal, anger, guilt, motherhood, forgiveness, and eventually the possibility of beginning again.
Maisie: Corby and Emily's surviving twin. Her story holds innocence, memory, and what remains after someone is gone.
Niko: Maisie's twin brother. His death divides the family's life into before and after.
Manny: One of Corby's most important relationships inside. He becomes an unexpected bridge between Corby's prison life and the family he left behind.
Solomon: A significant figure in Corby's prison years, raising questions about mentorship, influence, and whether a broken person can still give something good to another.
Anselmo + Piccardy: Officers whose actions expose the novel's darkest questions about power, punishment, and abuse.
Bryan: Part of Emily's life after Corby, and a living question: can loving what was coexist with embracing what comes next?

First pour

Start light. Everybody answers.

One word

What one word describes how you felt when you finished the book?

Rate it

One to five stars. The rule: you get exactly one sentence to defend your rating.

Table poll

Who did you feel the most compassion for? Who frustrated you the most? Who surprised you? Did you like the ending?

The passage you kept

Share the line, scene, or image you brought. Read it or describe it. Then: why did that particular moment find you?

The river-stone vote

Lay these cards down the center of the table:

Grief
Addiction
Forgiveness
Justice
Family
Friendship
Hope
Legacy

Each guest places their river stone beside the theme they think is most central to the story. Look around. Did the group agree? Why did you choose yours?

Keep your stone. You'll need it at the end of the night.

The man at the center

Course one

Corby causes devastating harm, and we also watch him suffer deeply. That tension is intentional.

At the beginning of the book, how did you feel toward Corby? Did that change? Was there a specific moment when it changed?

Corby has a legal path that would downplay his intoxication. Why do you think he chooses a full confession instead? What does that choice reveal about him?

Is the Corby at the end fundamentally different from the Corby we first meet? What changed, and what didn't?

Hot takes

Pick a side. No "it depends" until after you've chosen.

Corby deserves my compassion. Agree or disagree?

Understanding why someone did something should change how we judge what they did. Agree or disagree?

Corby truly changed. Agree or disagree?

Now defend your answer.

The big question: Can you deeply empathize with someone while still holding them fully accountable? Where's the line between understanding someone and excusing them?

The river

Course two

The Wequonnoc isn't scenery. It's almost another character.

Walk through the important river scenes. What does the river represent to Corby at different moments?

Escape
Death
Truth
Cleansing
Transformation
Release
Home
Something else

How does its meaning change when we meet the river through Emily at the end?

Lamb had to answer his own title: who or what is the river waiting for, and why? How would you answer?

Around the table: If the river is the movement of life, what's something life taught you that you couldn't have learned without living through it?

Addiction, mental health + secrecy

Course three

Corby's tragedy doesn't happen in isolation. Depression, anxiety, an addictive prescription, alcohol, losing his job, shame, and secrecy all tangle together.

Did the novel change or complicate the way you think about addiction?

Corby hides much of what's happening from Emily. Why?

Protecting her
Protecting himself
Shame
Denial
Control

What might the novel be saying about masculinity, vulnerability, and the pressure to "handle it" alone?

The bigger question: What happens when we reduce a whole life to someone's worst moment? And on the other side, what happens when empathy leads us to minimize responsibility? Can truth and compassion exist at the same time?

Punishment or rehabilitation?

Course four

Corby goes to prison because of what he did. Once inside, the book asks a different question: what should happen to a human being after they're incarcerated?

Think about Anselmo and Piccardy, Corby's assault, his mental-health treatment, the failed drug test, isolation, the prison library, and the men he lives among.

Where did you see justice? Punishment? Abuse of power? Rehabilitation?

Corby's failed drug test, tied to medication from his own treatment, derails his path to release. How did you react? What does it reveal about living in a system where others hold enormous power over your future?

Did anything about prison life surprise you? Did the novel challenge assumptions you held?

Finish the sentence: "Before reading this book, I hadn't really thought about ."

Art, purpose + the mural

Course five

Here's a beautiful irony. Commercial art paid Corby's bills but starved his creative soul. Prison strips nearly everything away, yet the mural sets something in him free again. As Lamb puts it, confinement lets Corby rediscover art for art's sake.

What does creating the mural give Corby that prison has taken?

Identity
Purpose
Freedom
Beauty
Voice
Hope
Legacy

What does the mural eventually mean to Emily? To Maisie?

Why might a small object like Corby's stone become so meaningful when everything familiar is gone?

Art as resistance: Can making something beautiful be an act of resistance in an ugly place? Where have you seen art, music, writing, photography, gardening, or cooking help someone endure something hard?

Grief + forgiveness

Course six

Nearly everyone in this novel is grieving something: a child, a marriage, freedom, a future, a version of themselves, the life they thought they'd have.

Whose grief affected you most, and why?

How do the characters grieve differently? Who numbs? Who gets angry? Who isolates? Who creates? Who reaches out? Who just keeps moving?

Emily carries enormous guilt about her final conversation with Corby. Were you angry with her? Did you understand her? Both?

Manny eventually tells Emily things she didn't know about Corby's final experiences. Why does the fuller story matter? Can new information change how we understand the past, or change guilt?

The forgiveness question

Does forgiveness require reconciliation? An apology? Does forgiving mean what happened was okay? Is it necessary for growth?

And ultimately, who most needed forgiveness in this story?

Corby from Emily
Emily from Corby
Corby from himself
Emily from herself
Someone else

Can you begin again?

Course seven

How do you move toward something new when someone from your past still holds such a big place in your heart and your story?

What did you think about Emily's relationship with Bryan?

Does moving forward mean leaving someone behind? Or can grief and new love share the same life?

For real life: Have you ever discovered that moving forward didn't require erasing what came before? What did that look like?

Memory + legacy

Course eight

Corby leaves things behind: a stone, art, stories, people who knew different versions of him. And the mural, where the novel ends with Maisie reaching up to the painted image of her lost twin.

Emily scatters Corby's ashes near the end, but that isn't the last scene. Why do you think Lamb closed on Maisie and the mural instead?

What does Corby's art preserve that words couldn't?

How should Maisie remember her father? The man responsible for her brother's death? The father who loved her? An artist? A prisoner? Somehow, all of it?

Around the table: Is there an object, recipe, photograph, song, place, or handwritten note that connects you to someone you've lost or want to remember? Share if you'd like.

Side dishes

Pass these around if the conversation wants more

The threefold return

The novel weaves in the Wiccan Law of Threefold Return: what you send into the world comes back to you. Where did you see it at work? Did it feel like karma, justice, consequences, or grace? Does the book suggest people get what they deserve?

Fathers + sons

How did Corby's difficult father shape the man and father he became? What patterns did he repeat, and what did he try to do differently?

What do we inherit from our families, and what can we choose not to pass on?

The people who save us

Manny. Solomon. The librarian. People who see Corby as more than inmate, addict, or criminal. Who becomes a lifeline for Corby, and who does Corby become a lifeline for? Did Solomon benefit from knowing him?

The big one: Who are we because someone once saw more in us than our worst moment?

COVID behind bars

Corby's three-year sentence ends in the summer of 2020. Lamb started writing before the pandemic and said leaving it out would have been unrealistic. Visits cancelled, programs shut down, men locked in cells for weeks. How did COVID change Corby's story? Would it have ended differently without it?

How the story was told

Lamb's early drafts alternated between Corby and Emily. His editor urged him to tell it through Corby alone and let us know Emily through his eyes. Did that work for you, or did you want more of Emily's inner life?

The book moves back and forth through Corby's childhood, marriage, and prison years. Did the time jumps deepen your empathy or pull you out of the story?

Intermission games

For lightening the table

Would you rather

Have Corby over for dinner, or Emily?

Spend an afternoon painting with Corby, or talking with Manny?

Read Emily's untold version of the story, or Manny's?

See the mural in person, or sit by the Wequonnoc?

Get one more chapter from Corby, or one from Maisie as an adult?

Have Wally Lamb tell you what happens ten years later, or leave the ending exactly where it is?

Cast the movie

Hollywood called. Our book club has casting authority.

Corby:

Emily:

Manny:

Solomon:

Bryan:

Movie or limited series?

Song over the closing credits:

Rapid fire

Everyone answers. No essays allowed.

Favorite character:

Most frustrating character:

Most heartbreaking moment:

Most hopeful moment:

Character you'd want at dinner:

Character you would not want seated next to you:

Best relationship in the book:

Scene that must be in the movie:

One question for Wally Lamb:

Who you'd recommend it to:

Dessert: the big question

The question of the night

If there's only time for one deep conversation, make it this one. What does this novel say about whether a human being can become more than the worst thing they've ever done?

And what allows someone to become more?

Accountability
Love
Truth
Forgiveness
Consequences
Community
Purpose
Grace
Time

What are you holding differently?

The best books don't always change our minds. Sometimes they just make us hold something with more complexity.

After this book, what became a little less black-and-white for you? Addiction? Incarceration? Grief? Forgiveness? Second chances? People who have hurt others, or themselves?

At the water's edge

Save this for last

The river table

Pick up the stone you chose at the start of the night. Imagine setting something into the river. It doesn't need to be dramatic: a regret, a season, an expectation, a version of yourself, something you can't change, something you've been carrying longer than you need to.

What would you let the river carry away? Say it out loud, or simply keep it.

And what remains?

Corby's life leaves ripples, some devastating, some beautiful. The mural remains. Maisie's memory remains. Manny remains. Emily keeps living.

What do you hope remains because you were here?

One last round

No explanations at first. Just go around the table and finish the sentence:

"For me, the river was waiting for ."

Listen to every answer. Then, if you want, go back around and talk about them.

Watch with Wally

Keep the conversation going with Oprah Winfrey's conversation with Wally Lamb about The River Is Waiting. Watch a few minutes together over dessert, or send the link around the next morning.

Watch Oprah + Wally Lamb

Setting the table

Optional ideas for the host

A New England river supper

The Wequonnoc is modeled on the rivers of Norwich, Connecticut, so lean into early-autumn New England:

Start: corn or clam chowder in mugs, with warm crusty bread.
Main: herb-and-lemon trout or salmon, and "river stones": roasted fingerling or baby potatoes.
Side: a green salad with apples, toasted walnuts, and sharp cheddar.
Dessert: warm apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.
The signature drink: "Downstream," sparkling water with blueberry, lime, and a sprig of rosemary. Given the book's themes, consider making the signature drink zero-proof and letting it be the star.

The river centerpiece

A low bowl of water, river stones, greenery, and a few floating candles down the middle of the table. Set a small stone at every place. Guests use it for the river-stone vote, hold it through dinner, and take it home as a reminder that life keeps moving.

The place card

Put a small folded card at each seat.

Front: What is the river waiting for? (Don't explain it. Let it sit there all through dinner.)

Inside, opened at the end: What are you ready to let move downstream?

The dinner playlist

Start with the song that gave the book its title, "The River Is Waiting," sung by Irma Thomas (written by John Fogerty). Then build around it with river songs: "Take Me to the River" (Al Green), "River" (Leon Bridges), "Down to the River to Pray" (Alison Krauss), "Moon River," and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (Simon & Garfunkel).

Go deeper

Documentary night

Watch PBS FRONTLINE's Prison State (on PBS.org or the FRONTLINE YouTube channel). Afterward: What surprised you? Which systemic issues stood out? Where did you see parallels to Corby's story, and did it change how you read the novel?

Artistic legacy project

Make something inspired by Corby's mural: a tiny painting, a photograph, a collage, a sketch, a paragraph. No talent required. Prompt: create something that represents transformation, remembrance, or hope. Then share why you made what you made.

Books behind bars

Corby's prison library matters. Learn about groups that get books to incarcerated people, like Freedom Reads, Prison Book Program, and Books Through Bars. Consider choosing one together, or finding a local chapter, and donating a stack of books as a club.

A final toast

To complicated stories.

To people who are more than one chapter of their lives.

To truth without condemnation,

and compassion that doesn't pretend choices don't matter.

To the people who meet us in hard places.

To making beauty when life isn't beautiful.

To remembering. To releasing. To beginning again.

And to the river that keeps moving.

Cheers to a great book, and an even better conversation.

Sources

Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting (Simon & Schuster, 2025).
Readers group guide for The River Is Waiting, including the discussion questions, enhanced activities, and "Questions for the Author" Q&A with Wally Lamb. Author background, the "Weeping Woman" inspiration, the Tom Drury quote, the prison writing program, his sobriety, the mural and "Class Artist" details, the song title, the editor's point-of-view note, and the COVID timeline all come from Lamb's own answers here.
Book club discussion questions for The River Is Waiting, Bookclubs.
Oprah Winfrey in conversation with Wally Lamb, YouTube.
PBS FRONTLINE, Prison State, pbs.org/frontline.
Freedom Reads, Prison Book Program, and Books Through Bars.
"The River Is Waiting," written by John Fogerty, recorded by Irma Thomas.

Menu, playlist, games, and table ideas are original to Booked for Dinner.

A River Is Waiting Discussion Group Guide Booked For Dinner