IN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE “This potent book about America’s most disgraceful sin establishes as a first-rate novelist.”- San Francisco Chronicle 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.Keith Vient, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, DC This searing and ultimately uplifting story explores the constructs of family, real or artificial, and the power of memory to bind people together from afar.” In the much-anticipated first novel from Coates, Hiram’s talent is used by agents of the Underground Railroad to bring runaway slaves north, and also to help make families whole once again. But it is the strength of his memories that kindles a special inner gift: the magic of conduction. “Hiram Walker, the son of a Black woman and her white master, is born into slavery in this rendering of life in antebellum Virginia. Norris Rettiger, Lemuria Bookstore, Jackson, MS Winter 2020 Reading Group Indie Next List Written with poignancy and humanity, The Water Dancer left me stunned but clear-headed, like I had just been woken up from a deep, dream-filled sleep.” Coates writes with an honesty that can only come from a sublime, even spiritual, understanding of the souls of the white man and the black man in America.

Over 400 pages I have cried, I have laughed, I have been educated, and I have been enlightened. The Water Dancer led me on a journey up and down the landscape of American slavery with a narrative that feels like The Book of Exodus meets, well, Ta-Nehisi Coates. “Ta-Nehisi Coates understands something big and he understands it better than anyone else right now.

Book review the water dancer