At once devastating and defiantly hopeful, Nathan Harris's debut novel, The Sweetness of Water, traces the entangled lives of freedmen and farmers in the early days of Reconstruction.
As Confederate soldiers return defeated to the Georgia town of Old Ox, at the close of the Civil War, George and Isabelle Walker are reeling from news of their only son's death. Bereft, the couple takes solace in an unlikely friendship with brothers Prentiss and Landry, recently freed from the neighboring plantation. In a move that scandalizes the town, George hires the brothers to farm his land, paying them "a respectable wage doing what they know in the manner of any other men." Meanwhile, the revelation of a secret tryst between two Confederate soldiers shakes the town's already fragile social order, jeopardizing the path toward a better life for the brothers and the Walkers.
Harris is masterful in his use of characterization to access theme. For Prentiss and Landry, agency is vital: "So much of their lives had been pressed upon them by other men, it felt only right that each decision be prized--their own to make." In emphasizing their will to self-determination, Harris offers an antidote to the romantic racism endemic to many portrayals of the postbellum South. Landry's near-total silence throughout the novel, belying a rich interiority that Harris renders beautifully, is a particularly poignant genre critique. George and Isabelle are likewise vividly realized, endearing for their eccentricities and stubbornness in the face of oppressive social mores. Elegant and ambitious, The Sweetness of Water announces a major talent. --Theo Henderson, bookseller at Ravenna Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.