The Water Seeker

Starred review from April 26, 2010
Holt (When Zachary Beaver Came to Town) serves up an absorbing, atmospheric epic of intertwined lives on America’s western frontier. Dowser Jake Kincaid discards his gift—the ability to find water—to become a trapper in 1833. Returning home one year later to find he now has a motherless child, Jake leaves baby Amos to be raised by relatives. It’s a hard life in what is now Nebraska, but Amos is with friends and family who understand what it takes to survive, take joy in the good times, and keep moving forward when life turns ugly. Jake returns each summer, and in 1841 he does so with his new Shoshone wife, taking Amos back to Missouri. Amos’s transformative journey to adulthood truly begins when he is 13 and the family joins a wagon train headed west on the Oregon Trail. The extreme hardships and developing relationships deeply affect everyone whose life touches Amos, but Holt focuses on Amos and his growth. There’s no central villain or crisis that needs to be resolved. Instead, Holt makes it clear that it’s all about the journey. Ages 10–14.

July 1, 2010
Gr 5–8—-orn near Independence, MO, in 1833, Amos Kincaid has a difficult life from the start: his mother dies giving birth to him, his father is an often-absent trapper, and his early years are punctuated by illness, tense encounters with Native Americans, and hard work. When Jake finally returns to reclaim the growing boy, he takes him on one of the many pioneer trains heading to Oregon while hired on as a scout. Both Jake and Amos have a gift for dowsing water, but neither this nor other magical realism elements (such as manifestations of Amos's dead mother) add much to the story, which is at its best when detailing the harsh and often deadly conditions faced on the way to the Willamette Valley. However, Amos's coming-of-age story, shaped by the trials he faces and the influences of friends, relatives, and loves, is a well-developed character study. Libraries needing historical fiction will find this a worthy addition.—"Christi Esterle, Parker Library, CO"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2010
Grades 7-10 Stretched over 20 years and 2,000 miles, award-winning author Holts latest novel is a sweeping story of westward expansion, beginning in 1833 Missouri when a young mother dies in childbirth. Her baby, Amos, survives and is raised by in-laws until his trapper father, Jake, returns. So begin years of hardscrabble pioneer life as Amos shuttles between friends, neighbors, and relatives, finally joining Jake and his Otoe Indian wife on a wagon train headed for Oregon. Scenes of magical realism add rich texture but arent always well integrated, and the novels episodic pacing is uneven. Yet Holt creates a moving, palpable sense of pioneer life in graceful prose that occasionally reads like poetry. And her memorable characters stories raise powerful questions about how lives are shaped: by chance, skill, inherited gifts (both Jake and Amos are dowsers, who can sense where water is located underground), and love that transcends generations and even mortality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)