4 Seasons Book Club

The Water Dancer
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he has ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he is enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram's resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children.  The violent and capricious separation of families and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today's most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.

NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE; NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Paste, Town & Country, The New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal

Nearly every paragraph is laced through with dense, gorgeously evocative descriptions of a vanished world and steeped in its own vivid vocabulary. -Entertainment Weekly

The 4 Seasons Book Club meets quarterly to discuss pre-selected works of modern fiction and celebrated classics.  Titles are decided by group vote approximately 6-8 weeks before each book club meeting.

Contact Joyce, jwheatley@tcpl.org, if you are interested in reserving a book and/or joining us.