The Water Dancer

Since it came out in 2019, I’ve only heard good things about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s novel, The Water Dancer. I was excited to finally read it, and wow, what a stunning book this was! In the mid-1800s, Hiram Walker was born into slavery on a plantation in Virginia. He can’t remember his mother, who was sold away when he was nine, but he retains a magical gift passed down from her. After almost drowning, Hiram feels an urgent need to escape. So begins his journey north, his induction into the Underground Railroad, and a mission to save the family he lost.

Review

Prior to reading The Water Dancer, I had heard that it was a very literary, lyrical, even difficult read. That gave me pause going in—I sometimes have to be in the right headspace for something too literary—but I actually found this to be a quick and engrossing read. I flew through it and was utterly engaged from start to finish. It’s poetic and dreamy, but not confusing or dense.

This book starts off in Virginia in the mid-1800s. Hiram Walker is the son of a Black enslaved (“Tasked”) woman and a white plantation owner father. Although Hiram has nearly photographic memory, he can’t remember anything about his mom, who was sold off when he was nine. Despite being Black and “Tasked” himself, Hiram has an interesting relationship with his white father and brother. They are oppressors and yet his family, in a twisted sense.

Family is one of the most important themes throughout The Water Dancer. We repeatedly see how enslaved people have their family units torn apart, effectively making orphans and widows of people when their loved ones are sent away. In order to find the will to carry on, they form new family units with those around them. Hiram has a close bond with a woman who lost her children; she becomes a sort of mother figure to him. The concept of found family comes up again and again, offering connection and strength when so much has been taken.

This novel never specifies the year it’s set in, but as Harriet Tubman is actively freeing enslaved people, that situates it in the 1850s. But this is not a straightforward work of historical fiction. Instead, it weaves in magic and mystery with roots in Africa. Hiram has a magical gift, even if he doesn’t understand it or know how to use it at first. He eventually learns that Harriet Tubman has the same gift, and it helps her free people along the Underground Railroad.

The Water Dancer builds up so much, but it doesn’t end where I thought it would. It leaves enough unanswered questions and enough open doors that I could see it having a sequel. I would love to read more about these characters and where the Underground Railroad takes them next, so I hope there will be follow-up books! At least there is a movie in production that we can all look forward to.

Final Thoughts

The Water Dancer is a beautiful and mesmerizing novel. It’s powerfully written, walking the line between dreamy and lyrical yet propulsive and engaging. This is a book everyone should read, and I look forward to more from Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Historical Fantasy
Setting	United States
Number of Pages	416
Format I Read	Hardcover (BOTM)
Original Publication Date	September 24, 2019

Official Summary

#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 Chronicle

IN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Adapted by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kamilah Forbes, directed by Nia DaCosta, and 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