Like Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the omniscient teller of Alice Hoffman's The River King has a profound affinity for water. Unlike Ishmael, whose story ends tragically, this narrator, and we, her readers, find in the water's depths the perfect metaphor for the rushing currents of life. For this reason, water is everywhere in Hoffman's latest foray into North American magic realism. There are countless floods and storms, overcoat pockets gushing with river water, a swimming pool as haunted as any house-on-the-hill, a newborn child set in the rushes of the river like the baby Moses.nnnnThe setting is Hadden, Massachusetts, which is also the name of the town's elite boarding school, and the river that runs through them both. Here we encounter a large and compelling cast of characters, both "townies" and Hadden School faculty and students, all of them caught up in a mystery that revolves around a death that seems to be a suicide. In what often feels like literary sleight-of-hand, Hoffman brings her players on stage to play their scenes with such grace that you almost forget that you haven't known them for years.