"[5][6] "Fall River" was written when the then 19-year-old Cheever was under the influence of leftist and anti-Fascist literary figures, among them Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, Hazel Hawthorne Werner and M. R. Warner, all of whom acted briefly as his patrons.
[8][9][10] Literary critic John E. O'Hara reports that the story is of interest in that it "skirts the edges of pro-Communist sentiment" but that as literature is "primarily an experiment in mood creation" in its imagery of a mill town devastated by the Great Depression.
[11] Biographer Scott Donaldson writes: "Artistically, 'Fall River' was a failure, since it consisted almost entirely of descriptive passages, with little plot or characterization to command interest.
"[12] Literary critic George W. Hunt identifies the following paragraph from "Fall River" as an example of Cheever's ability to "assimilate Hemingway's style.
But the sky remained heavy and the roads were dusty for as long as three weeks and when the spring came it was hard to remember the snow because there had been so little.