Wade in the Water: Nyani Nkrumah

The story of a friendship that develops between Ella, a 12 year-old precocious and mistreated black girl and Katherine St. James, a mysterious, strikingly well-dressed white woman who arrives in rural Mississippi in the early 80s.

I really liked this book. Unlikely friendship between a black girl who isn’t treated well due to her being illegitimate and darker than the rest of her family; and a white woman who came to town for mysterious reason. It takes place in a small Mississippi town in the early 1980s, but I often felt it was taking place in the 60s - that may just be due to my lack of knowledge of what it was like in the 80s in poor areas of Mississippi. I am comparing it to the middle-class area of Virginia I knew. It touched on how people who lived through the Civil Rights Movement felt in contrast to those in the 80s who didn’t. It was humorous at time but still dealt with a somber subject of the Freedom Summer Murders and racism, I really love how historical fiction sends me down Google Rabbit Holes to really understand the subject. The story was heartbreaking, and I really thought about it for days. What a great debut novel.

Title: Wade in the Water

Author: Nyani Nkrumah

Buy Book: https://amzn.to/3QyYGoC

Rating: 4 Stars