I turned the final pages of this novel, 'Wade in the Water', several days ago and I find that I can't stop thinking about the story. The novel is set mainly in Ricksville, Mississippi in 1982. There are two narrators: Ella, an 11-year-old black girl and Katherine, a white
…more graduate student who attends Princeton University in New Jersey but is in Mississippi to work on her master's thesis. Although the bulk of the story takes place in 1982, the narrative does periodically go back to the summer of 1964, often referred to as Freedom Summer which was marked by huge protests after three civil rights workers who were in Mississippi to help register black people to vote, were found murdered. Freedom Summer is the series of events which ties the present to the past in this novel and becomes part of the bond between Ella and Katherine.
Although this novel continues to occupy my thoughts, I have to be clear that it is because of Ella. She is a character who immediately captured my heart. She is fiercely intelligent, curious, gives new meaning to the idea of having a close and personal relationship with her God and most of all, she has a magnificent, beautiful spirit. There are some hard themes in this book and Ella endures things which, in a perfect world, no child would even be aware of; but Ella is the character who kept me turning the pages. I was so invested in this child that I needed to know that she would be okay in the end.
I think perhaps the author was a bit too ambitious in this novel. I found that I could not really understand Katherine St. James's motivation for what she was doing. It was clear that she had also experienced some trauma in her life and it was obvious that she had devised a plan as to why she was returning to Mississippi. She was clever and cunning. I just couldn't get at what she was hoping to accomplish with her research. Justification? Rationalization? I have no idea and eventually, I ended up not caring about her . She became almost a caricature. Ella was the star of this novel and if you want a reminder of the enormity of the human spirit, you should definitely read this book. (less)
