Oct 22

Oct 22 The Water Dancer

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Five Star Books, Audiobooks, Best Audiobooks, 2019 Best, Diverse Reads

Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a book I may not have picked up if not for a nudge or two and having suddenly seen it everywhere online and in bookstores thanks to it being chosen for Oprah’s Bookclub.

I’m not going to lie, I was coming down from reading another wonderful book, and this took me a little while to get into. The writing is lyrical and dense and the language from another time. But once I was a few chapters in I was completely transported…or conducted if you will…to another time and place. The author brought alive historical figures and events, giving them a richness that can not be achieved by mere facts alone, but can only be woven into you through such a telling.

Stories need to be told, to be passed on from generation and generation or else they’ll be lost. And I am certainly glad that the author told this particular story, in such a moving way. I have no doubt it will become a favorite for many as it has for me.

I read the first half of the book via physical copy (which you can get here) and the last half as an audiobook. The audio version is narrated by actor Joe Morton, who does an incredible job. If I had to choose between the two I would recommend the audio version of this book every time. It was just so beautifully done! You can get your own copy, while supporting local brick-and-mortar bookstores through Libro.fm by clicking the button below. Use the code ‘LatestBookCrush’ to get three-for-one audiobooks!

Get the Audiobook

Synopsis:

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 utopic 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.