![]() He has “developed a hitch over the last few years, had pinned it on a misplaced step as he descended from his cabin to the forest floor,” Harris writes, “but he knew this was a lie: it has appeared with the persistence and steady progress of old age itself-as natural as the lines on his face, the white in his hair.”Īs he grapples with aging, George roams the land in search of a near-mythical creature, a beast that has eluded him since childhood but which he has seen and still believes to be out there. It becomes apparent early that George is a man in search of direction, both literally and figuratively. He opens his book (published by Little, Brown, and Company on Tuesday, and just selected by Oprah for her book club) with a white, pacifist landowner, George Walker, losing himself in the overgrown forest of his property on the edge of Old Ox. The 29-year-old Austin author earned his MFA last year from the University of Texas’s Michener Center. What’s the price of dignity? What’s the legacy of slavery and racial violence? And what does it really mean to be free? ![]() ![]() In the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, brothers Prentiss and Landry find themselves freed but confronting the question, What next? Despite its historical setting, this story asks questions that feel intensely relevant today. Nathan Harris’ extraordinary debut novel, The Sweetness of Water, takes place in the fictional town of Old Ox, Georgia, in the waning days of the Civil War. ![]()
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