I have not read as many books this summer as I wanted to. A few weeks ago, I perused our local library, not looking for anything particular, when I noticed a book cover standing alone on a shelf, not lined up alphabetically by author’s name. It was Bonnie Jo Campbell's new fictional novel, The Waters, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2024. I would define the genre as a mystical tragedy of healing and love.
The first two-page map spread features a pen-and-ink drawing of Whiteheart, Michigan. In the center is M’sauga Island, where the story takes place. Massasauga is a rattlesnake living in the swamps of Michigan. This endangered species is referred to as a muck rattler in the story. The muck rattler is wound into the story as the movement of the Old Woman River and as lyrical as the prose it is written in.
Generations of women live or have lived on the island, barricading themselves from the mainland and men. The grandmother, Herself, is like a medicine woman, healing with all Mother Nature provides her in the swamps, including the muck rattler. The townsfolk are afraid of her but also need her healing.
Her granddaughter, Dorothy, whom she nicknamed Donkey, may have seemed wild to those who criticized her upbringing. We experience how much Donkey earns her mother’s love, fantasizes about a father she wants, cares for her grandmother, and learns the family recipes for healing. Her mother, Rose Thorn, is her connection to the mainland and the deep family secrets hidden in the swamp.
When reading Donkey’s thoughts, you succumb to the mystical spell and lose yourself to this child maturing into a young woman. Campbell writes, “Donkey knew she was being deceitful by letting people think Herself was back to fixing fixes, and she thought it must be the snake blood that allowed her to take pleasure and pride in secretly being the one who could heal people now.” (Pg 207)
If I had a pencil and paper in my hand while reading, I would draw swirling, curving, coiling, undulated lines as Campbell’s sentences construct the soul and place of The Waters, like the movement of muck rattlers slithering beneath the foundation of Rose Cottage into the boundaries of its wetland home.
Bonnie Jo Campell has also written Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, Once Upon a River, American Salvage, Q Road, and Women and Other Animals.
Have you read The Waters or any of Campbell’s other books? What books have you read this summer? Please leave your comments.
