Customer Reviews

The Water and the Blood: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is much darker than Ms. Turner's previous book, but it was very moving and clearly indicates the author's ability to write in multiple styles and deal with many types of characters. The characters are well-developed, some of them deep and some shallow (just like real life). I liked Frosty, who has a naive, trusting perspective of those around her, yet who is ultimately able to see the truth about the people in her life even when it doesn't agree with what she's been taught. I also liked the sheriff; Ms. Turner was careful to avoid all the Southern sheriff stereotypes and make him a real person. The story moves along well, and I learned a lot about the War era that I'd never known. (I knew about Rosie the Riveter; I didn't know they recruited girls from all over the country and relocated them to work in specific factories.) I really enjoyed this book, although like I said it was "darker" I generally feel that racism and hatred in any form is a pretty dark subject. Ms. Turner handled it very well without being either morbid, judgmental, or hateful herself. Having also been around people who acted like Frosty's family, I found her treatment of them realistic, as well. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Once you get past the mixed POV (the main character's story is told in the first person, and other characters are brought in by the omnipotent point of view), this book is a very enjoyable read.

The story is of Philadelphia (Frosty) Summers, going from childhood to young adulthood during the time of World War II. She struggles to break from her family's stronghold and the ties that bind her to Sabine, Texas, her small, prejudice-laden hometown. Through her experiences, she learns independence and compassion - something she can only do by cutting the apron strings that bind her to Sabine.

This is a much different story than my all-time favorite "These Is My Words" but only slightly less compelling. I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. I have become a huge fan of Nancy E. Turner and can't wait to read whatever she comes up with next!

When I learned that Nancy E. Turner had a new book coming out, I was hoping for a sequel to the wonderful THESE IS MY WORDS. THE WATER AND THE BLOOD was an unexpected, and deeply rewarding surprise.

Ms. Turner is a remarkable writer. She has the knack of taking ordinary people and every day lives, no matter what the time period, and turning them into unforgetable characters and profound reading experiences.

This book is often painful to read, but impossible to put down. Ms. Turner takes us to a time and place that we sometimes don't want to visit. But every word she writes is true and strong.

Frosty's experiences with her family, neighbors, and school mates, are not at all out of place in a small Texas town in the forties. Still her relationship with a family who will never understand her,and the reaction of those around her,is sometimes painful to read. "Dysfunctional family" is a contemporary term, but unfortunately has been accurate for many previous generations.

The Navajo code talker, Gordon, who helps Frosty to change from adolescent to adult, is as realistic and sensitive a hero as one could ask for. Their love story is handled with such care, it was like reading about real people. For me, the true test of exceptional writing.

So, this is not the book I was expecting. I am still hopeful that Ms. Turner will gift us with a sequel to WORDS. But in the meantime, she has given us another extraordinary novel. Written with grace and passion, and that unique gift of writing about people whom we all might have known.

A profoundly moving amd powerful book about coming of age, doing the "right" thing, and that love and respect often come at an enormous price, THE WATER AND THE BLOOD is not to be missed.

I only hope that Nancy E. Turner receives the respect and accolades she so richly deserves. I am grateful she shares a truly special gift with all of us who love to read.

[Note: Randy Garsee is a broadcast journalist in Tucson, Arizona and frequently interviews authors.]

The True Story Behind
"The Water and the Blood."
You might say "The Water and the Blood," Nancy E. Turner's second novel rose from the ashes of an actual event in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona.
"There was a time when I belonged to a church that had been burned down while I was a member of it," said Turner. "And I remember just how devastated I felt."
Turner is referring to a church fire in 1996 when the First Southern Baptist Church, a Tucson landmark, was torched by an arsonist.
Turner's novel begins with a church fire, but the story is set in the 1940's and the church is in east Texas, not Tucson.
The reader will discover an intermittent theme of racism in this novel, but possibly not in the context one is used to seeing it.
Turner spent several weeks in East Texas researching her book and most of that time was spent in Jasper, Texas. Jasper attracted national attention after an African-American man named James Byrd was chained to the back of a pickup and dragged to his death. Three white supremacists were convicted of Byrd's murder.
"Interviewing people and trying to go back into that time and be accurate and yet not be brutal was really tough," said Turner, who talked to people in Jasper about racism. "What I found was that if you just spoke to them, they were all friendly. It didn't matter what color or shape or size or anything. I didn't have any preconceptions of what it would be like. Having spent most of my life in Arizona and California, that kind of racism is so foreign to me that I felt like it was kind of a mystic thing. It was almost like something I was trying to understand from either side. And so I think there's a lot of that in this book, too. These lines have been drawn and they've been there for so long, that I just had never been exposed to in that way. You hear things growing up, but it's not like living it."
The main character in the novel is a girl named Frosty. Turner said of Frosty, "I wanted a main character who was so naïve to wickedness that she really didn't even see it around her. She can look at people's hearts and not their skin color."
The other main character is Gordon, a Navajo Code Talker. His story takes the novel into battles of World War II. For the descriptions of war, she gives credit to her grandmother's brother, a U.S. Marine.
"The descriptions that he gave," said Turner. "He said, `You know, I came up through the tide pools and bodies washed back and forth like minnows in a bucket.'"
Turner received some critical praise for her first book, "These is my Words."
"The Water and the Blood" with its wonderful prose and amazing characters should launch Turner into the national spotlight of modern day writers.

I found this book hard to follow in the beginning. I couldn't get past the first few chapters for the longest time. There were too many characters thrown at you way too fast. And way too many situations presented all at once. I found myself flipping back to the beginning chapters to understand a later character/chapter better. The author uses a lot of flash backs so you never fully know if you are in a memory or in the present story. The story has potential and is interesting enough to read once.

I loved Nancy E. Turners other books and These Is My Words is my favorite. But this one just didn't flow as smoothly as her other books. Her other books are written in a diary format. I like her way of writing diaries and this book should have been written as a diary as well. It still feels like a diary but there are absolutely no dates to follow. So you never know what time or year you are in.

If you can get past the first half of the book the story seems to go pretty fast. The characters are thrown at you fast and without any history to them at all until much later in the story. The mother is abusive but there is no revelation as to why. The author hints at mental illness but does not go into any detail as to why she would be this way. Many times you wonder if it is not her real mom and the author does nothing to correct your thinking until the very end.

Frosty marries a Native American and introduces him to her extremely prejudiced family and town. Knowing her family and her town, Frosty never thinks it is odd that her husband is invited to go "hunting" and doesn't return? She goes about her life the next day. Still no sign of her husband. She goes to church, still no sign of her husband. She never asks, or searches or wonders. When the church that her husband did electrical work on goes up in flames, she does not worry about her husband or go frantically searching for him. She just goes down to the church to check it out. Very odd. The character is very frustrating. At the end of the book she and her husband just up and leave. They make a stop out in the middle of nowhere where they both seem to contemplate suicide over a cliff. Then the book just abruptly ends. No epilogue, no wrap up. Just ends. Obviously leaving it open for the author to write another book. If she does, I hope it is entirely in diary format!

Two problems I found with this book:

The story takes place in 1941 & 1942. One third of the way through the book the author mentions "...a famous missionary like Corrie ten Boom..". Would the character even know that Corrie ten Boom was famous yet? The ten Booms helped hide jews during 1943 & 1944. They were captured in 1944. It wasn't until after the war that we even knew of the Ten Boom family and the help that they offered. Corrie became a missionary after 1944. Corrie ten Boom would not become famous until after the war. So how would the character in The Water & the Blood even know about her?

Page 344 is a complete mess! Apparently the editor fell asleep or couldn't make it to the end and approved the rough draft without finishing the book. A paragraph ends at the top of the page, and it sounds fine. But then you get to the next paragraph and the same sentence that appeared in the previous paragraph is now here. And it is now mixed with new ideas and new sentences. While the new paragraph works, it makes you question which ending of the previous paragraph you would have liked better. And now you wonder how you would have liked to read this new paragraph. Which paragraph should the sentence be in? Very odd and disappointing.

This book stunned and caught me, and I couldn't put it down. I just kept going trying to find out how the world of a Big Thicket girl could possibly be linked to a Navajo Code Talker. But Turner pulls it off. I was amazed by her accuracy in capturing the racist, backward attitude of an East Texas logging community and its errant teens, as well as the starkly contrasted Navajo community of Gordon Benally and his kin. What a shock that those two worlds met, came together, and struggled to survive!

The dysfunction of Frosty Summer's family is almost too much to bear. In fact, I almost thought the tale would never end. Frosty's parents, sisters and friends are so vividly real and cruel and stunted by their culture, rooted in the fundamental Bap-Diss church, that it is hard to understand how she clings to it as she does. But the old adage, "blood is thicker than water" certainly applies, and the injustices of this WWII world of racial hate are potent.

Turner's no chapter style and juxtapositioning of scenes out of the two very foreign cultures of the Thicket and the reservation are rather Faulknerian, yet, there are character names and distinct links. Working the puzzle, reading through and learning how things are connected is worth it. But the truths of racial prejudices, particularly in the first half of the 20th century are here and vivid.

To read this over 400 page volume requires a determination to plow through the hard times that both Frosty and Gordon experience. This is mostly Frosty's tale, however, and she is spunky, determined, capable of hard work and a true survivor, one of the tough women of times past, yet near.

Having read two of Turner's books, I wonder where her next female protagonist will hail from and how strong she will be. I will be curious, and I do recommend that you try "The Water and the Blood". It is disconcerting and memorable.

What a perfect title!

I usually read in the evening to help me fall asleep. I actually lost sleep over this one. The characters were so real they followed me into the next day's mood. The 'loved it' or 'hated it' reviews were telling. Turner let us get to know the characters without having to load us up with description and history. Those who need all sweetness and light and require everything spelled out for them will not like this book, nor will southern Bap-Diss. I will be reading her other works soon.

Changing points of view give Frosty a first hand say in the story, while other characters are third person. I liked the way the Navajo part of the story is dreamy and full of images. All of it seems like a huge metaphore for the brokenness in some families, where one person is always left behind or left out. Frosty is a sad, angry kid living in a sad, angry family. Yet, in the end the reader knows she's going to be all right in spite of everything, because she sees but doesn't see, looking on the hearts of people instead of their skin color.

I was enchanted by Nancy Turner's novel_These is my Words_; in fact, it was my personal book of the year.

Nancy Turner delivered a fresh novel, heavily burdened with baptist theology and ironic interpretations that were predominate in the pre-world war II days and post WWII.

Enter "Frosty" Summers, whose real name is Philadelphia. The contrast of names is not lost on the reader.

Born into one of the most dysfuntional families in East Texas, Frosty grows up amidst bigots and heavy bible thumping people who choose to preach but not obey.

Frosty is a sensitive soul, with an independence that becomes her savior. From the start of the novel, she is unknowingly weaved into a web of planned criminal behavior which feasts on the ugly issues ingrained in the history of whites vs. blacks. Frosty is not the typical child, reared back at this time to segregate herself and her life from the "dark" skins. Her life is constantly reinforced to follow programmed steps, and above all else, to never associate herself with those not like herself.

It is so obvious in this lovely, historic novel, that the most senstive, importantly holy people are those with "dark skin". The absolutely pure and christian beliefs that impart baptist theology are never more ironic than in this novel. The ugly reality of life of blacks were beyond the tolerance of any mortal soul. What makes their journey significant, is that the black people had to indure the disgusting offenses committed upon them by some of the most ignorant persons in the world, and holding the bible before them in complete security that their interpretation is that of the word of God.

Oh, how far from the teachings of the Lord can one ever be.

This book was absolutely fabulous. I had never heard of this author before and when friend of mine told me someone had written a book about the town I lived in I was curious. Come to find the town in the book is supposed to be made up! I loved this book. It is rich with feeling and character these people are three dimensional. I find I don't go to bed alone, they are right there with me. Living in the south I have been witness to a lot of racism and prejudice and this book captures the intense feelings of both sides. I love the contrasts in this book. Gordon is treated with absolutely no respect and looked down upon because his skin is 'dark.' When Frosty goes to the Navajo Reservation she must endure the same formidable sentiment from his people. Turner has captured human beings in a way I thought was forever lost in a literature lacking, instant gratification, sound bite, smut novel society. This book shows the human spirit climbing to new heights of understanding.

If you have a hard time getting into this book give it another shot or maybe your not ready for real literature.

Write more, please!!! I am currently reading These Is My Words and will be needing something new to read so hurry.