When George’s Confederate soldier son, Caleb, unexpectedly returns home, and Caleb’s romantic relationship with another soldier comes to light, tensions between George’s family and the town’s disapproving residents boil over. In the waning blood-filled days of the Civil War, Georgia farmer George Walker hires formerly enslaved brothers Landry and Prentiss to work his peanut farm-and perhaps to ease his restless soul.
I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.Actor William DeMeritt’s deep, measured narration enhances the elegant, evocative prose of Nathan Harris’ debut novel, The Sweetness of Water (12 hours). I am still blown away that this is a debut novel and I can’t wait to see what else this author will write next. Once I got halfway through the book, the pace was relentless and I could not put the book down. Many of the characters took me by surprise.
The racism and cruelty will pull at readers’ heartstrings, but the way of thinking is evident that we in the present day still have a long way to go.Īt first, I thought this story would be pretty straightforward but there were some surprising twists. Particularly in the South, returning soldiers were angry about them stealing their jobs–we have heard this before. Newly freed Black Americans had to be careful just as much as before Emancipation. Just because those who were enslaved were freed doesn’t mean things miraculously changed overnight. Since this book takes place at the end of the Civil War readers will see the defeat but the seemingly endless pride of the South. The style of writing is unique and once I was about fifty pages in, it flowed perfectly. This book is one of the most poignant, yet beautiful books that I have read this year so far. A discovered forbidden love leads to a cruel murder that threatens to tear the town apart. They soon develop a close bond that will help them in the times to come. They find themselves on George’s property and George hires them to help him work the land. Due to the Emancipation Proclamation, freed brothers, Prentiss and Landry are trying to find their way up North to hopefully find their mother who was sold years before. The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris is the book club pick for the Bookstorians! The Civil War is at its end, George Walker has just received word that his son, a confederate soldier has died.
“those prone to evil were left untouched by guilt to a degree so vast that they might sleep through a storm, while better men, conscience-stained men, lay awake as though that very storm persisted unyieldingly in the furthest reaches of their soul…” The Sweetness of Water
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