In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Scott Gould’s compelling novel Peace Like a River is filled with unforgettable characters and is lyrically written.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Gould’s sly sense of humor and talent for old-fashioned storytelling keep the narrative flowing briskly along over an eventful few days, as a death takes place, a boat overturns, a snakebite threatens a life, Roma unexpectedly shows up, and Elwin contends with the past. It’s a rewarding slice of life.”
In his own words, here is Scott Gould’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Peace Like a River:
Peace Like a River is the story of sixty-something Elwin McClennon, who returns to his hometown—and the dying father—he fled fifteen years earlier. Accompanied by Thom, his odd and precocious thirteen-year-old son, Elwin sets off on a journey to reconcile with his father and their complicated pasts, and it all takes place with the backdrop of Black River. (Yes, the real name of a real river in Lowcountry South Carolina…Not some sort of cooked-up metaphorical name.) Because I’m a junkie for structure, I divided the novel into 4 distinct parts, so I figured I’d do a playlist for each section, because, you know, a long list of river songs seemed a little too on-the-nose and annoying.
Part I – The Old Man
“Old Man” by Neil Young
Okay, maybe this is too on-the-nose as well. But I couldn’t help it. Young’s Harvest album is coming-of-age vinyl for me. “Old Man” was one of the songs I learned to play when I got my first guitar in 1972. In the novel, the son, father and grandfather continuously orbit each other; this trio of relationships forms the hub of the narrative, and it’s not too far-fetched to think about the first line of the chorus when you think about those three characters: “…take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you were.”
“Poppa Was a Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations
Elwin McClennon’s father never caused the sort of trouble mentioned in The Temptations’ #1 1972 release, but he was by no means a model father. When Elwin was a kid, his father would disappear for weeks at a time—mysterious disappearances, until Elwin discovered his father was spending his time away from his family on the banks of Black River, fishing and drinking Old Milwaukees. (Also my Uncle Dale used to show off the biggest speakers in his Magnavox store by playing “Poppa Was a Rollin’ Stone” at full volume. He told me once that The Temptations cracked the showroom window. So I guess this song wedged its way into my childhood and never faded away.)
“Hello in There” by Kathleen Edwards, covering the John Prine song
Another song from the early 70s. There seems to be a trend here. Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards does a gorgeous (and sonically respectful) cover of the John Prine song on her Covers album, released in 2025. I was lucky enough to see her do the song live, in Lowcountry South Carolina, not too many miles from the mouth of the actual Black River. When she sings, “Old people just grow lonesome/Waiting for someone to say/’Hello in there, hello’” it echoes in the novel.
Part II – The Shack
“Love Shack” by The B-52’s
In the novel, Elwin’s father lives in a tiny, stilted house perched on the banks of Black River. During Elwin’s childhood, the only structure that stood in that spot was a leaky, windowless plywood shack. Elwin tends to conflate the two buildings, calling his father’s newer house a “shack” throughout the book. The B-52’s “Love Shack” makes you smile and move, which is quite a different vibe from the shack in Peace Like a River, but still, you can’t really have a shack playlist and not include this one. Plus, it gives us a chance to debate whether the band really meant to imply pregnancy with “tin roof, rusted,” or was just describing the love shack.
“One Room Country Shack” by John Lee Hooker
There have been dozens of covers of the Mercy Dee Walton blues staple, but John Lee Hooker’s version possesses (magically?) a definite Black River vibe. The tempo of the song is the flow of the river—slow and syrupy. And when Hooker sings, “I’m a thousand miles from nowhere, in this one room country shack,” it conjures up the image of Elwin’s father, especially in his last days, sitting on the porch of his river house, watching the black water creep by.
“The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert
Not a “shack” song per se, but this #1 country hit, written by Nashville songwriters Allen Shamblin and Tom Douglas, opens with a lyric that rings true for the novel’s central character, Elwin: “I know they say you can’t go home again/I just had to come back one last time.” Elwin, in fact, has come home again, tugged there by his father’s impending death. When he gets there, the memories and the ghosts begin to rise.
Part III – The River
“Take Me to the River” by Annie Lennox
Lennox’s pop-infused cover of the Al Green/Teenie Hodges classic doesn’t possess the Memphis soul of Green’s original or the twitchy strangeness of the Talking Heads’ well-known version. But Lennox’s vocal on her 1995 cover is pretty amazing. And I mean, if you’re going to do a playlist for a novel set on a river, this song has to be included.
“The River” by Bruce Springsteen
In a river, you can get anointed. You can get baptized. You can come clean. You can drown. In the 1979 Springsteen classic, you hear a hint of all the things a river can symbolize, both good and bad, both loss and redemption. In Peace Like a River, I think I was trying to walk that sort of tightrope by creating a narrative that illustrated the power hidden in a river, power that can be destructive or healing. Often at the same time.
“Snake Drive” by R.L. Burnside
Spend any time on a river in Lowcountry South Carolina, especially in the summer, and you’re going to share the water (and the bushes and the tree limbs and the cypress stumps) with snakes, particularly moccasins. There is an encounter with a water moccasin “the size of a kid’s arm” in part 3 of the novel. The frantic wildness of R.L. Burnside’s hill country blues is an apt soundtrack for that scene in the book.
Part IV – The Bridge
“Ode to Billie Joe” by Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams drags Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 classic to the swamp and slathers it with mud. And that’s a damn good thing. If you’re a devotee of Lucinda Williams, the breathy phrasings and swamp funk won’t surprise you. If you aren’t, you’re welcome for the introduction. In Peace Like a River (and in the collection of stories that birthed the novel, Strangers to Temptation) somebody does indeed leap from the bridge.
“Bridges” by Tracy Chapman
Chapman opens this 1989 song by singing, “All the bridges that you burn/Come back one day to haunt you.” The past–and the memories it houses–create a fair amount of haunting in Peace Like a River, some of it in the shadow of a bridge that spans Black River. The novel isn’t a ghost story, but apparitions do rise in the surface of Black River, ghosts that both torment and aid the living.
“Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers
While the themes and images explored in the Chili Peppers song couldn’t be further removed from the rural, swampy setting of Peace Like a River, the tune’s tone and pace track closely with the novel, especially Anthony Kiedis’ expressions of loneliness and isolation. For Kiedis, under the bridge is a place to be avoided. For Elwin in Peace Like a River, the bridge represents a similar fear.
Bonus Track
“Orange Kitty Song” by Brother Spellbinder, maybe?
One of the secondary characters in Peace Like a River is an orange quasi-feral cat named Willie Nelson. I won’t go into his origin story here–read the book, all is explained–but there exists on YouTube a mesmerizingly bizarre song and video called “Orange Kitty Song” and I think it’s by this band called Brother Spellbinder. Check it out. And don’t hate me.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Scott Gould’s playlist for his story collection Idiot Men
Scott Gould’s playlist for his story collection Strangers to Temptation
Scott Gould is the author of six books, including The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a Memoir Prize for Books. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Kenyon Review, Garden & Gun, Black Warrior Review, BULL, Pangyrus, New Ohio Review, Crazyhorse, Vessel, and New Stories from the South. He lives in Sans Souci, S.C.