The Water Dancer

This is a book on slavery, different than any I’ve ever read… yet so beautiful!

Hiram Walker is one of the tasked—son of a tasking woman and their enslaver. He is gifted with a perfect memory beginning after his mother is sold away—but those earlier memories are locked away from him. Because of his gifts (and parentage) he is elevated and educated so that he may be the right hand of his older half brother and heir to the plantation, but an accident disrupts everyone’s plans and Hi’s other gift emerges. This is a perceptive look at the lives of the enslaved and their owners in the late 1850s as the tobacco crops dried up in Virginia, as well as the ideals and methods of the Underground Railroad. But there are also moving characters, and a touch of magic, all connected by beautiful writing. Everyone should read this!