#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom.“This potent book about America’s most disgraceful sin establishes [Ta-Nehisi Coates] as a first-rate novelist.”—San Francisco ChronicleIN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR … Francisco Chronicle
IN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Adapted by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kamilah Forbes, produced by MGM, Plan B, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films
NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • Vanity Fair • Esquire • Good Housekeeping • Paste • Town & Country • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal
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
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Beautifully written with the perfect touch of magical realism. The story was so all-encompassing that you could feel the weight of the slaves as you read. And, while the subject of human bondage is mortifying, there is so much hope woven in the pages.
Mesmerizing! I could not stop listening to the audio version as I was quickly fascinated by the characters and the intriguing twist on an age-old story. The narration was expertly performed by Joe Morton, including the songs. An amazing novel, which I highly recommend.
It’s the best book yet from this powerful author! It’s quite disturbing to read…but I wish it were required reading of all American youth! I learned a lot; even though it was a novel, it read as if the author had done a lot of research to give credibiity to it. The painful realization of the terrors of slavery come to life.
The Water Dancer is the story of Hiram, a young slave who is half white, half black. His slave mother is gone, and he lives on the estate of his father. As Hiram grows, his father notices something special about Hiram and brings him to be tutored like his older brother. Hiram continues to grow, and tries to escape from slavery. In doing so, he becomes part of the Underground Railroad.
Along the way, Hiram learns he has the gift of conduction, he meets “Moses” – Harriet Tubman – and many others who are part of the railroad.
This is a beautifully written book, but I felt it was way too long. I would have appreciated it being about 100 pages shorter.
#TheWaterDancer #TaNehisiCoates
This is a book that is not to be rushed – give yourself time to be immersed in it and the story. This is a book that tells a great story, but it takes it time getting there [that is what kept this from being 5 stars – there are moments where is is VERY slow and I had a hard time staying engaged. Once the audiobook came out and I switched to that, it became much easier as the narrator was fantastic] and you have to be patient and just let the story unfold. And if you can do that, then this beautiful, gorgeous, scary, horrible, life-changing, magical book will just seep into you and stay with you.
I cannot say that I loved every minute of this book, but I did love most of it and like I said, the narration is just lovely.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Coates is a respected journalist, non-fiction author and teacher. This is his first novel, and it’s an admirable effort.
There have been many novels about slavery, the Underground and the African-American experience. For a debut novel to earn the positive reviews and critical applause it has, you know it must possess qualities which raise it above the pedestrian level.
Coates has crafted characters the reader will care about, an imaginative plot and prose that sings like poetry.
Such a powerful story! I love novels that immerse me in another world and offer insight into people and places and history that I could never otherwise know. Highly recommended!
It’s like if the world of superheroes and the world of slavery met.
I listened to the audiobook of The Water Dancer. I had a little trouble connecting with the book and characters, but once I did, I was riveted to the story. Ta-Nehisi Coates has an amazing way with words. This story often grabbed at me with fingers of grief and sorrow for a past I cannot change. The truths found in this book are are disturbing but the characters inspire hope. The reader of the audiobook did an excellent job. When he sang those stanzas in the book, I wanted him to sing the whole song, not just a few lines. His voice resonated with emotion. Well done.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel The Water Dancer is a slowly and painstakingly woven narrative of resilience and persistence in the face of one of human history’s most horrific episodes. Even as Coates’s beautiful and contemplative prose elevates the painful tragedy of the deep injustices faced by Black people in America since their abduction and enslavement, or as he calls them in this novel the “Tasked”, he holds nothing back in laying bare the violence done upon them by their white captors and oppressors, or the “Quality”. Memory, storytelling and the strength of a found family are important running themes in the novel, and become powerful tools in the hands of the Tasked in their path to freedom from the Task or enslavement. The magic of the world that Coates has constructed is also dependent on these very powerful emotions. While on the one hand there is deep empathy for those who would like to forget the terrible experiences inflicted upon them by a cruel and callous class of degenerates who like to live the lie of being superior to/better than, there is acknowledgement of strength in the collective in overcoming memory as a burden and turning it into a tool of emancipation. The insistence on the value of found family, a family you choose for yourself, regardless of blood ties (and often, as in the case of Hiram, despite blood ties) becomes an act of resistance in the face of the fear and mistrust of love and attachment that the conditions of slavery would try to enforce on its victims, which the characters in the novel bravely try to overcome.
Coates’s characters are complex, realistic and well-rounded, and one finds oneself empathising with his protagonist Hiram as he strives to be a better man than what the circumstances his white overlords have imposed on him demands he be reduced to, even as the novel acknowledges that victims of such oppression don’t owe anything to anyone to be anything. Hiram’s voice as a protagonist is particularly refreshing in the respect, complexity and agency he accords the women in his life, as well as the humility and self-critical lens through which he is able to view himself and his own assumptions and attitudes towards them. The novel also makes an important comment on ally-ship and white ally-ship in particular, and takes a critical if not entirely unsympathetic view of white allies in the novel like Corrine and Mr. Fields. While their contributions and struggles are acknowledges and appreciated, the novel and its insightful and observant narrator makes no qualms about reminding the characters and by proxy the reader that their experiences can never be comparable and what drives their abolitionist beliefs comes from a different place than that of the enslaved.
I had a hard time with this book. I enjoyed the author’s voice and style. I got into the characters. But somehow my practical self kept interfering with my enjoyment. I still recommend it for the excellent writing.
First, let me say that Book Bub doesn’t have an adjective for this book, and should add the term, “Poetic.” It’s a beautifully written story that everyone who wants to understand Black history should read.
The story of slaves and the underground railroad in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Very original writing style and complex characters.
Eye opener. Should be required reading
A compelling story with characters that stay with the reader long after the book is finished.
What a beautiful writer Coates is. I enjoyed the magical realism element, and I thought the characters were wonderfully vivid. Kudos to Coates for writing strong female characters too.
Good story about the underground for slaves. It is written in the eras language. It goes slow to absorb the story. But, it your interested it is very good.
Coates is a respected journalist, non-fiction author and teacher. This is his first novel, and it’s an admirable effort.
There have been many novels about slavery, the Underground and the African-American experience. For a debut novel to earn the positive reviews and critical applause it has, you know it must possess qualities which raise it above the pedestrian level.
Coates has crafted characters the reader will care about, an imaginative plot and prose that sings like poetry.
From the first page, this book had my full attention. The underbelly of the Antebellum South is revealed through the eyes of young Hiram, who is raised by others when his mother is sold. The son of the plantation owner, Hiram is tasked with caring for his half brother Maynard. I loved the historical detail in the book, and even more the lush poetry of Coates’s writing. There are secrets, thrills, gross injustices, heroism, and even romance in a shameful time in our history. I couldn’t put it down!
I really wish I could have discussed this book at book club because I had some strong opinions and am curious what others thought. I enjoyed Hiram’s story about growing up as a slave on his father’s plantation, running away, and eventually ending up working for the Underground Railroad. I love historical fiction and particularly enjoyed learning about the Underground Railroad and the different roles people played and how it differed in the north and the south. Hiram even had a chance to work with Moses, aka Harriet Tubman.
What I didn’t enjoy was the paranormal/magical parts where Hiram and Harriet would use stories and emotions to teleport from one place to another. To me, it bumped me out of the story and made me question the other historical aspects of the story. In my opinion, it also took away from the true danger Harriet put herself in every time she helped bring slaves to freedom because transporting someone magically, isn’t the same as what she did in real life. But I never got to learn the way she really did it.