In I've Known Rivers, sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot practices her unique "human archaeology," peeling back the layers of six extraordinary lives. What she creates is a wholly original work, a penetrating portrait of the lives of middle-class African-Americans that has not been seen before. The six storytellers in Lightfoot's work are poised in midlife, the time we all look back as a way to anticipate the future. In dialogue with Lightfoot, they reconstruct their lives with heroic candor, reflecting on the "necessary losses," the price of privilege. Any reader, regardless of race or gender, will identify with these lives, with the way these storytellers live with contradiction, change rage into love, and search for ways to "give forward."