海角大神

Bonnie Jo Campbell is a chief practitioner of Midwestern Gothic. Her last novel, 鈥淥nce Upon a River,鈥� earned her bestselling author status and comparisons to Mark Twain. But her heroine, Margo, wasn鈥檛 just a Great Lakes version of Huck Finn. Campbell understands rural Michigan down to its trillium roots.聽

Her first novel in more than a decade, 鈥淭he Waters鈥� offers a portrait of a family of women intrinsic to the landscape. With its evocative descriptions of nature, the book practically sprouts in a reader鈥檚 hands.

Campbell begins like a fairy tale, in a house the crone Baba Yaga could have comfortably resided in. Hermine Zook, known as 鈥淗erself,鈥� has raised three daughters on an island that can only be reached via a plank bridge. Herself is a healer, who in her youth prepared cures sweetened with blackberry and honey. Today, they are bitter. 鈥淚t is said that the island, where healing waters percolate to the surface, was a place where women shared one another鈥檚 dreams, a place where women did what they wanted.鈥�

Women doing what they want have frequently been called witches, and Campbell doesn鈥檛 shy away from the evil men do to women who live differently. The violence perpetrated on her characters is both matter-of-fact and generational. There鈥檚 another fairy tale, 鈥淒onkeyskin,鈥� that offers clues to the secrets the Zook women must live with.

The novel opens with Rose Thorn, the youngest and most beautiful of the daughters, returning home with a daughter of her own for her mother to raise. Donkey, as she is known, absorbs wisdom from Herself, and loves everything about the island, including the shy rattlesnakes. Upending patrimony, the youngest daughter inherits everything. 聽

Lush, brackish, and bracing, 鈥淭he Waters鈥� is not so much read as steeped in.