"The River House Broke. We Rushed in the Water"

Storytelling CATEGORY — SHOWCASE gold award

Texas Monthly
Aaron Parsley

07/10/2025

The subject line was “The Guadalupe.” The time stamp was Saturday, July 5, at 7:57 a.m. The sender was senior editor Aaron Parsley. “I don’t have a phone or a laptop but I’m home in Austin now,” Aaron wrote,

“and wanted to let y’all know what happened.” The text of the email Aaron sent to three of us at Texas Monthly was unfathomable. In about a thousand words, Aaron chronicled an impossible event in the life of his family, a horrifying story of both tragedy and miracle. (See supplementary materials for the text of this email.)

Hours later, the tragedy still raw, Aaron proposed that he continue what he started with that first email. He asked if Texas Monthly might publish his story so that people could understand what occurred on the river that night—what happened to Aaron and his family when the Guadalupe River rose around the house they were staying in and ripped the home from its twenty-foot-high pillars, sending everyone, including Aaron’s young niece and nephew, into its waters and into the night.

In less than two days, Aaron delivered a vivid, masterful chronicle of his family’s ordeal. “Where the River Took Us” is unlike any story we’ve ever published. When Aaron’s first draft came in, we were only days away from shipping the August issue, but we bumped the planned cover story; photographed the site where the home once stood; edited, copyedited, and fact-checked the story; and shipped the revised issue with only minutes to spare.

That the story exists at all is a miracle. That Aaron managed to tell it so elegantly is beyond explanation. In short order, it shattered records as the most-read story in Texas Monthly history, and longtime readers and veteran staffers alike hailed it as one of the best pieces the magazine has ever published. Months later, we’re still awed by what Aaron achieved—and immensely grateful he survived to be able to do it.

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Submitted by Aaron Parsley.