The Waters

By: Bonnie Jo Campbell

Narrated by: Lili Taylor

A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town.

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest—the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn—has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.

Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. Rage simmers below the surface of this divided community, and those on both sides of the divide have closed their doors against the enemy. The only bridge across the waters is Rose Thorn.

With a “ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world” (Jane Smiley, New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.

"Bonnie Jo Campbell’s The Waters is a novel, a living myth, and a place. … Imagine a mash-up of Flannery O’Connor and the Brothers Grimm, of Angela Carter’s reimagined fairy tales and William Faulkner’s gothic sublime. And yet, The Waters is all Bonnie Jo. …" —DIANE SEUSS, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frank: Sonnets

©2024 Bonnie Jo Campbell (P)2024 Recorded Books

GAH This narrator ruins the story

I don't want to be negative, but I'm trying to dissuade folks from purchasing the narrated version of this book. I purchased both the kindle version and the audible version since it's for Book Club and I bounce back and forth between the two. The narrator's cadence is very distracting and confusing and the recording is unprofessional. I am enjoying the story, just not this narrator.

Magical sentence structure

At first I got frustrated and lost in the run on sentences. Then I fell under the spell of the island.

A very detailed account of a very specific place in Michigan.

This book shows how secrets and stubbornness affect families. I didn’t enjoy the constant tension between the characters. The use of cures from nature was the most interesting part for me.

Lovely book

This book is beautiful, you can see the words as they form the image. The Author tells the story and it’s one of longing and love . The unfairness of the world we live in and how we still raise despite the things that are thrown at us. I enjoyed every minute.

Stick with it…

I loved the actress reading this book! It did take a while to really grab me…BUT I am glad I did finish it! I liked where the characters landed!