BookLife Review by Carol O'Day: The Sweetness of Water (Nathan Harris, author)
historical fiction, Emancipation, immediately post Civil War, Georgia, South, farming, justice, racial injustice, dignity, LGBTQ+, brothers, muteness
Set in the years immediately following the Emancipation of enslaved people in the United States, Nathan Harris’ debut novel, The Sweetness of Water, is set in Georgia. Two formerly-enslaved brothers, Prentiss and Landry, find work on a farm owned by George and Isabel. Landry’s jaw was mangled when he was beaten as a slave and he does not speak, but his brother understands him and communicates on his behalf. George and Isabel are attempting to operate their farm while mourning the loss of their only child, a son, Caleb, who never returned from the War. George, of advanced age, needs help on the farm and hires Prentiss and Landry, at a fair wage, to help him with the farm, hoping they will stay. The brothers intend to earn money to move away from the prejudices of the South. Meanwhile, Caleb lives, and his return home takes a detour as he revisits a forbidden love, a fellow (male) soldier, the well-to-August from his hometown.
The story-telling here is lyrical and not rushed. At times, it languishes, but in the lulls, Harris’s prose dives deeply into developing the characters’ backstories, and spins for them complex emotional lives that ring true, extracting and laying bare on the page the sometimes secret emotional pain each suffers (loss of a son, fears around aging, prejudice, lack of resources, threats of violence, and exposure, to name a few). The leisurely pace is vanquished when one of the emancipated brothers stumbles upon August and Caleb entwined in a lovers’ tryst in the forest. The mute brother is almost concurrently accused of accosting a white person and the brothers must flee. George aids their escape and is shot during the chase.
There are loose ends here, and some injustices are left unresolved. While that may well be the way of the world, it may dissatisfy some readers. Harris’s writing captures the time-in-between, the limbo lived by the newly freed men post-Emancipation who have freedom but limited skills, no resources and few options. It highlights the parallel limbo and relative freedom and power experienced by women in small town farming communities, as well as the more subtle ways women in this era were able to both support and damage one another. So much is written about both life in slavery and the period of the Great Migration and the Civil Rights eras. Harris’ book lands as a gift; the story is swaddled in the immediate aftermath of the Civil and allows the reader ponder the experiences that those unusual circumstances presented for the free and the formerly enslaved, for the just and the racist alike.
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