-
Access our Top 20
Books of 2024!
A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging
by Tara Roberts
For fans of Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped, this searing memoir by a National Geographic explorer recounts one woman's epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean—and find her place in the world.
When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.
In this lush and lyrical memoir, she tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity.
Complex and unflinchingly authentic, this deeply moving narrative heralds an important new voice in literature that will open minds and hearts everywhere.
"Roberts matches a reporter's meticulousness with a memoirist's emotional attunement, delivering a sweeping survey of slavery's repercussions. It's a must-read." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Tara Roberts is a pioneer and an inspiration. Her work does not so much 'unearth' the past as pull it respectfully out of the depths of the sea and the shadows of history. I am deeply moved by this book, and by her journey." —Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love
"Written in the Waters will be forever written on my soul. Tara Roberts is fearless yet vulnerable; adventurous yet grounded. This memoir does the hard, necessary work of generational healing. With her words, she charts a path to spiritual renewal." —Tayari Jones, New York Times best-selling author of An American Marriage
This information about Written in the Waters was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo by Tim Roberts
Tara Karr Roberts is a freelance writer, newspaper columnist, and journalism and English instructor at the University of Idaho. She is a lifelong Idahoan who grew up along the Pend Oreille River and now lives in Moscow, Idaho, with her family.
My Darling Boy by John Dufresne
The story of of a man whose son collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida.
.png)
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
