The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a historical fiction novel that follows the story of Hiram Walker, an enslaved man with a special ability who becomes an Underground Railroad conductor. The book explores themes of love, loss, family, and the liberating power of memory, all while delving into the horrors of slavery. Coates combines his knowledge of slavery with magical realism to create a lyrical and compelling narrative that follows Hiram's journey from the plantation to the Underground Railroad and back.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The novel addresses themes such as slavery, sexual violence, family separation, and trauma, making it potentially triggering for some readers.
Has Romance?
There are romantic elements present, particularly in the protagonist's feelings for Sophia, which shape his decisions throughout the story.
From The Publisher:
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her-but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he's ever known.
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram's resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children-the violent and capricious separation of families-and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today's most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.
Praise for The Water Dancer
"Ta-Nehisi Coates is the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race with his 2015 memoir, Between the World and Me. So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations-and then proceeds to exceed them. The Water Dancer . . . is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical significance. . . . What's most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. . . . Timeless and instantly canon-worthy."-Rolling Stone
Ratings (9)
Incredible (4) | |
Loved It (2) | |
Liked It (1) | |
It Was OK (2) |
Reader Stats (42):
Read It (11) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (24) | |
Did Not Finish (1) | |
Not Interested (5) |
1 comment(s)
This was such a well written and emersive book that it was hard to put down. Very horrifying topic with the slavery and the horror people had to endure. It's beautiful told and I really enjoyed the magical realism in this one as its something I often enjoy in a book but rarely finds
What can you read after
The Water Dancer?
About the Author:
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years In Power and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
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