The Sweetness of Water

In the fictional Georgia town of Old Ox, in the last days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry — freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and saving to travel north in search of the mother who was sold away from them — take work on the land of George Walker, an eccentric farmer grieving a son he believes was killed in battle, and his wife Isabelle. George pays them as free men, a fact the town does not forgive, and the fragile household built on that wage is broken open when George's son Caleb returns alive from the war and Landry witnesses Caleb in the woods with August Webler, the violent heir to Old Ox's richest family. The discovery sets off a murder and a convulsion that runs through every household in town, leaving Isabelle to emerge as the unlikely centre of whatever healing is possible. Harris's debut, written in a stately, lyrical prose unusual for a novelist in his twenties, treats Reconstruction not as aftermath but as an open question about whether people who have owned and been owned can learn to live as neighbours. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize and chosen for Oprah's Book Club.

Author: Nathan Harris · Original publisher: Little, Brown and Company (New York), 2021