The Water Women

A Novel

By: Bonnie Blaylock

Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan

A powerful, emotional, and redemptive novel about the interwoven lives of mothers and daughters and the bonds of an ancient craft that link them through two world wars and beyond.

In 1930s Sardinia, Allegra and her daughters maintain the tradition of the water women. As it was for the generations of Jewish mothers and daughters before her, weaving the fine threads of mollusks into golden cloth and tapestry is an honor, a duty, and a precious gift to an outside world that seems bent on turmoil.

By 1942, a threat comes to their sleepy fishing village. Germany has pressed its boot on Italy. Allegra’s daughter Zaneta notices boats she’s never seen before anchored off the shore. As her family withdraws from the once-unified community, their island home sinks into a fog of fear and suspicion. Then Zaneta meets a German deserter. With the encounter comes a secret that will haunt Zaneta forever, and in the years to come, her own daughter, Mira, as well.

For three women, the threads of the byssus weave a story of love, war, loss, and hope that will challenge them and bind them through the most trying times of their lives.

©2026 by Bonnie Blaylock. (P)2026 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“With The Water Women, set on a lush Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy, Bonnie Blaylock gives us the extraordinary gift of travel to another time and place, richly described. But also, in this beautifully unfamiliar setting, we find those familiar, ancient complications of generational ties. As the story unspools, we witness the threads of knowledge, struggle, forgiveness and love that bind, sometimes constrict and always enliven as they are passed down mother to daughter. With a lovely interweaving of little-known history and vivid imagination, here is a rich, engrossing tale of passion, purpose, and self-understanding.”—Joy Jordan-Lake, bestselling author of Echoes of Us and A Tangled Mercy

“Bonnie Blaylock’s The Water Women is a tale of three generations of Sardinian women whose family’s history of tradition, secrecy, wisdom and love becomes an enchanting tapestry woven with the rare golden threads they harvest from the ocean floor.”—Mark Sullivan, bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and All the Glimmering Stars

I was pulled in to this story of weaving Byssus and the generations of strong women

I have never heard of Byssus or sea silk before reading this beautiful novel. I was pulled in to this story like the tides that are so cherished by the water women who carry the tradition of weaving sea silk from one generation to the next. The detail of how much work and devotion goes into this art made we want to do a little research of my own. This story also covers several periods in history that reminded me of just how many hardships they had to endure in the early 1900s, 2 world wars and Spanish flu for starters. I felt everything with these characters. It is a story of heavy losses but the ability to remember the foundations your life is built on and persevere through it all, to survive and leave behind a legacy. Highly recommend.

Sweet story of Mothers and Daughters

Loved learning about byssus (sea silk) and the island of Sardinia in this sweet story. Bonnie Blaylock perfectly captured the love, tension, expectations and secrets between mothers and daughters.

A beautiful woven tale

What a beautiful story of generations. This story is filled with love and honor. It made me think about the stories we leave behind. This one will likve rent free in my head for a long time.