Downriver, an U.S. historical novel from late 1800s to post WWI, moves from a Dickensian orphanage to river show boat to Kinemascopes before landing in the early days of the motion picture industry. Scrupulously researched, Anderson seamlessly melds historical figures poet Vachel Lindsey, first movie star, Florence Lawrence, and Alice Guy Blaché, an early woman film director with the adventures of his fictional protagonist Anne Blackstone. Lois Webber, Cecil B. DeMille, Pauline White, Chaplin and Mary Pickford have brief, delightful appearances, as well.

When runaway orphan, Anne, assists on a river showboat, she becomes enamored about plays and acting. Soon, she trades boat for train when she joins a producer showing roughly made motion pictures to railroad towns in the Midwest. Her duties as sound person—buzzing for mosquitoes, knocking together blocks of wood for horses, operating a wind machine—give a humorous look at early film production. In an upstart film company in St. Louis, she writes and directs her first script “The Orphan’s Revenge,” given in a delightful excerpt. Edison company reps try to halt their production with threats and bullying and thugs set afire the studio where she works revealing a dark history to film-making. When she meets the legendary poet Vachel Lindsey, who would become America’s best-known poet, she finds a movie fan, supporter and intermittent lover. Convincingly, he becomes part of the fictive world of Downriver.

From fake news stories planted by a motion picture company of the sad death of one of its stars to crowds rioting for contact with celebrities, the novel is rife with events echoing our present times. Certainly, chapters set in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of film production in the early 1900s, are intriguing. Anne becomes an au pair for Blaché at Solex films in Fort Lee in order to maneuver her way into another film job. One of the more stirring set pieces in the novel is the Army of Women’s Suffrage march down on 5th Avenue (“To the Women Give the Vote”) and Blaché’s speech at Columbia University encouraging women to become directors of film.

As the film industry moves to CA and WWI heats up, Anne gets an offer to make morale-building movies for the Army. In time, she sees the advent of movie “palaces” that serve shrimp cocktail and have rooms for child care.

Downriver is compelling, entertaining reading, and for anyone with an interest in the history of film, particularly women in film, it’s essential. For the most part, instances of film history are integral to plot. The novel is straight-forward, realistic depiction, but the occasional inclusion of samples of film scripts advance the plot is non traditional ways.

As testament to Anderson’s integration of fact and fiction, and absorbing character development, his fictive character Anne seems to have earned a place in the history of motion pictures by novel’s end.