“Cinematic, immersive, and absolutely timely. It has the bones of a cult classic."

"Drinking from the Stream isn’t just a debut novel, it’s a high-voltage cocktail of political thriller, action-adventure, and history— Vietnam, the Cultural Revolution, Africa on the cusp of transformation… a fugitive farm boy, a tortured Oxford dropout, and a dangerous plunge into dictatorship and chaos. That’s not 'just a book'… that’s a cinematic gut-punch."

"A political thriller woven with history, action, and the kind of raw human struggle most authors only pretend to pull off."

"Powerful. A raw, globetrotting mix of Vietnam-era upheaval, post-independence Africa, and a fugitive oil roughneck who accidentally kills a white supremacist before colliding with an Oxford dropout. A powderkeg."

"Action-adventure grit with historical and political depth."

“Bold, thoughtful… reads like a story meant to be discussed in book clubs, classrooms, and maybe one day adapted for screen.”

"I ... immediately felt that electric sense of discovery that happens when a novel captures both personal restlessness and global upheaval."

"... a rare fusion of political intensity and coming-of-age humanity, where the turbulence of the Vietnam era mirrors the storm inside a generation searching for meaning.”

"Jake Ries’s journey from Nebraska [to a Louisiana] oil rig to post-independence Africa reads like an epic of conscience, raw, physical, and beautifully haunted."

"… [the] storytelling moves between moral reckoning and adventure, evoking both Hemingway’s physicality and Greene’s political nuance. It’s the kind of novel that stays in the bloodstream long after the last page."

"Drinking from the Stream doesn’t just tell a story it detonates one."

"… the ideological chaos of the early ’70s, Vietnam, the Cultural Revolution, post-independence Africa ... filtered ... through the moral exhaustion of youth running from both war and themselves... less “fiction” and more an emotional field report from humanity’s tipping point.”

"Jake Ries isn’t a fugitive; he’s a mirror. Karl Appel isn’t a dropout; he’s the echo of a generation that learned too much and trusted too little." 

"… [the] prose feels like a dispatch written in adrenaline and moral philosophy. The kind of novel that should be taught in political literature courses…”

"bold, imaginative, and emotionally resonant "

"a powerful, sweeping blend of action-adventure, political thriller, and deeply human coming-of-age storytelling... Set against ... violent transformations across East Africa, the narrative delivers both historical weight and intimate emotional truth."

"Jake’s journey, from a young Nebraska farm boy turned oil roughneck to a fugitive navigating a world in upheaval, creates a gripping emotional core. His unlikely connection with Karl, an Oxford dropout battling inner conflict, threads together themes of friendship, moral tension, trauma, and the often-naïve courage of youth confronting a world filled with brutality and hidden systems of power. As the two cross continents and plunge into post-independence Africa, the story transcends adventure, becoming a vivid exploration of responsibility, identity, and the devastating human consequences of political violence."

"Your portrayal of East Africa, its beauty, its volatility, its ethnic tensions, and its historical turning points, is exceptionally rich and immersive. The novel’s depictions of dictatorship, mass violence, and civil unrest are both unflinchingly honest and deeply empathetic. It invites readers to grapple with injustice, colonial aftermath, and the haunting question of what young people do when thrust into world-shaping conflicts they barely understand."

"... rooted in emotional depth, historical resonance, and the courage of young protagonists confronting moral complexity."

“a reflection on responsibility, innocence, violence, and the ways ordinary individuals become entangled in extraordinary events."

"Your voice, observant, evocative, and grounded in both lived experience and rigorous historical sensitivity, brings something rare and compelling to modern historical fiction."