The Waters

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s The Waters is a modern-day fairy tale set on an island inhabited only by women: the small Zook family whose matriarch, Hermine “Herself” Zook, is an herbalist and a natural healer. When Hermine’s youngest daughter bears an unplanned child, she brings the child to Hermine to raise. The young girl, Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, grows to protect the island and care for her grandmother, maintaining the bond between the Zook women in the process. The novel explores the power of women, the divisions between men and women, and the secrets that keep them apart and bring them together.

Published in 2024, The Waters is written in the vein of rural noir—a genre for which Campbell is highly regarded. As a well-known writer of novels and short stories, Campbell grew up on a Michigan farm, and she often sets her writing in similar rural settings. Her three novels and three short story collections are highly acclaimed. Women and Other Animals won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction, while American Salvage was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.