The House of Deep Water

December 2, 2019
Three women reluctantly return to their small Michigan hometown in McFarland’s fine debut. Linda Williams never wanted to return to River Bend, but when she leaves her husband, she has no choice but to go back to her grandmother’s house. Also coming back to town is her estranged mother, Paula, who might finally ask her long-abandoned husband for a divorce. And then there’s Elizabeth DeWitt, who grew up as one of the only black girls in town. She’s lost her job and marriage, and the recent arrest of the man who abused her as a child is dredging up traumatic memories. Linda, in her early 30s, starts an affair with Ernest, Elizabeth’s elderly Casanova of a father, and moves in with him after she gets pregnant. When Elizabeth and her two kids also move in, things start feeling a bit too uncomfortable. Then Ernest has a stroke and is no longer able to care for himself, leaving Elizabeth and Linda to deal with the tension between them. And Paula, always stuck in her set ways, reconsiders former convictions when she too moves in. All three women share complex feelings about their hometown and its inhabitants, most of which are handled with realistic nuance. McFarland’s layered tale will appeal to readers who liked Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage.

February 15, 2020
Three women--two white and one biracial--reckon with a Michigan hometown each thought she had escaped. As this debut novel opens on fictional River Bend, "perched just above the state line in the soft crook of the St. Gerard River," its citizens register the sounds of particular truck and car engines, signaling the comings and goings of the individual townsfolk: "Women, especially those of limited means, must learn to read the signs." This shrewd line sets up a tale preoccupied with rural American limits and rupture, all marbled with prosaic details, such as meatloaf stretched with too much oatmeal. Mercurial Beth DeWitt has returned from North Carolina with two teenage children, stymied by job loss and divorce. Linda Williams, whom Beth once babysat, retreats from her own cratered marriage in Houston. And Linda's mother, Paula, who bailed out of River Bend years ago when her kids were small, arrives to secure the divorce from her husband that her Wyoming lover wants for them. Still, the main strip of this tale runs through Beth, who's biracial, damaged by a childhood of macroaggressions and the surly neighborhood babysitter's malevolent son. Beth's trauma sits astride this book, tucked into short italicized chapters which puncture the present-day story. That story, in turn, brims as Beth's elderly father impregnates Linda, Beth resumes furtive sex with the town's alcoholic married bad boy, who reeks of "cigarettes and Aqua Velva," and Paula dithers with her still-besotted ex. No reader would expect these scenarios to end well, but McFarland knows her way through the murk. Angry women mud-fight in a public pigsty, and the Williams clan navigates a surprisingly recuperative farmhouse Christmas, scrolled out in one long tracking shot. Some of the writing is expository and belabored, but the flood hinted at in the title arrives and delivers. So, in the end, does the story. A matriarchal tale asks who can thrive in small-town America.

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February 15, 2020
Multiple voices narrate this story of three women who left their small town of River Bend, Michigan, never looking back until their lives take unexpected turns. Linda leaves her husband and lands at her grandmother's farm, immediately starting a relationship with the significantly older Ernest. When Linda informs her mother, Paula, that she will be a grandmother again, it gives Paula an excuse to come back and finally make her divorce official. Ernest's daughter Beth returns with her two children, after leaving her own husband. Growing up as one of the only Black people in town, Beth had a difficult time in River Bend?made more difficult by the abuse she suffered at the hands of a man who has just been arrested for his crimes. Just like life, McFarland's debut is big, messy, and complicated while also being a completely engrossing portrait of her characters and their hometown. She deftly weaves in issues of race and consent. Perfect for those who like books about family dysfunction, this would also make a great book discussion selection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)