Excerpt from The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Can you make it?" Prentiss asked. "Best you go it alone from here."

"Might we wait a few moments longer?" George asked.

"You need to rest, Mr. Walker," Prentiss pleaded. "There's nothing for you out here."

"True, but." How unlike him. It must have been the dehydration. Yes, he was disoriented, a bit confused, and the tears were merely a symptom of his predicament. It was only a few of them at that. "I'm not myself. Excuse me."

Prentiss held him. He did not let go.

"I don't—I haven't told her, is all," George said. "I could not bear it."

"Told her what, now?"

And George thought of the image August had left him with that morning of his boy abandoning the trenches he'd helped dig, so gripped with fear as to soil himself, to cower and run toward the Union line as though they might pity his screams of terror, might see him through the glut of smoke and grant his surrender and not shoot him down with the rest. It occurred to him that Caleb might have inherited some flawed trait from his father. For who was the bigger coward, the boy for dying without courage, or George for not being able to tell the boy's own mother that she would never see her son again?

"Nothing," George said. "I've been alone for such long periods, sometimes I speak to myself."

Prentiss nodded, as if some reasoning might be found in his words.

"That animal you spoke of. Mr. Morton taught me some tricks through the years. Tomorrow, perhaps, I can help you track it."

There was pity in his words, and George, sensing the irony of a man living with so little offering him charity, straightened himself up and harnessed what little energy he still possessed to regain his composure.

"That won't be necessary."

He looked Prentiss over once, considering that this might be the last time they ever laid eyes on each other.

"I do appreciate your assistance, Prentiss. You're a good man. Good night, now."

"G'night, Mr. Walker."

George hobbled to the front steps, the cold already slipping away from his bones before the front door had opened and the heat of the fire found him. For the slightest moment, before going inside, he peered back at the forest, silent and void of life in the darkness. Like there was nothing there at all.

CHAPTER 2

George's love of cooking was just one of his many eccentricities. Isabelle had tried early in the marriage to take the role of house cook, but her husband's opinions on the preparation of a ham hock were no different from his thoughts on the hunting of a mushroom, the building of a tree swing: refined, specific, and executed with concision time and time again. Sitting at the table for breakfast, she would watch his routines with a mix of fascination and delight. These were habits he had perfected over time as a bachelor—the cracking of an egg was a one-handed affair, a smooth motion of the thumb, a rather feminine swoop that broke the shell in two; the buttering of a hot pan involved a quarter-inch slab, greased in semicircular motions until it hissed across the surface and disappeared.

He was more satisfied during the cooking than the eating, the latter of which seemed merely a slog to get through. They spoke few words at the table. Yet this morning was different. He'd somehow risen before her, an accomplishment in and of itself, considering how late he'd been out. And when she came downstairs, she found him at the table, staring at a spot on the wall, like the splintered wood might get up and carry on with its day.

"How about some breakfast?" she asked.

His face was expressionless. He'd never been handsome, for the balancing involved in the physiognomy of beauty had escaped him. His nose was large, his eyes small, and his hair fell in a ring like a well-placed laurel wreath; his belly had the taut rotundity of a pregnant woman and was always safely stowed away in the midsection between his suspenders.

Excerpted from The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris. Copyright © 2021 by Nathan Harris. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.