Customer Reviews

The Water Dancers: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved this book. It is spare and poetic and packs a real punch. I could feel and see and smell the setting (Beck's Point) in Michigan, and felt that the characters were real and compelling. It was hard to let them go. I bought three other copies to give to friends.
This love story is set among the richest AND the poorest in American society--their interactions and assumptions about each other, and Rachel and Woody's attempts to bridge the gap are wonderfully rendered.
I hope Terry Gamble writes another novel soon. I'll be first in line at the bookstore.

Like author Terry Gamble (of Proctor and Gamble lineage), I've spent nearly every summer of my life in and around Harbor Springs, Michigan, a small Northern Michigan resort community on the Little Traverse Bay. Gamble has drawn from her childhood memories spent on Harbor Point to create the lush settings for Water Dancers, using thinly veiled pseudonyms for Harbor Point (Beck's Point), Harbor Springs (Moss Village), Petoskey (Chibawasee), and Cross Village (Horseshoe Lake).

The novel's protagonist, Rachael Winnapee, is a sixteen-year old Odawa orphan from Horseshoe Lake who, since the death of her grandmother, has lived at the Indian School in Moss Village (the actual school is alongside the Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church in Harbor Springs), and like many First Nations orphans, is sent to be a domestic at Beck's Point.

The novel begins in 1945. Rachael ends up serving the March family from St. Louis. The March's sons are both overseas fighting, Lip in Belgium and Woody in the Pacific Theater. When Lip is killed in battle and Woody comes home an amputee and morphine addict, it is up to Rachel to help make Woody whole. The two begin a brief, intense love affair, sealed with seashells, hidden gifts, lovemaking in dunes, shallows and empty rooms, and finally, Rachael's unwanted pregnancy.

Rachel raises her son Ben on her own, continuing to live with the midwives who delivered her child. After nine years of helping out on their farm, Rachel moves back to Horseshoe Lake with Ben. The novel fast forwards to Ben's experiences fighting in Vietnam and his difficult readjustment to civilian life, and culminates in an unexpected and explosive conclusion in which the past is confronted and old ghosts laid to rest.

Water Dancers is a multifaceted novel of healing (three of the main characters are veterans), of class and race, duty, discovering inner strength, and seeking peace. The characters are poetically and lovingly crafted, down to the most minor details. Terry Gamble's first novel deliciously brings to life the many moods of water and forest that dominate life in Northern Michigan, and for those who are familiar with Northern Michigan, like Rachael's habit of licking stones, this novel will bring you home.

In this thoroughly enjoyable first novel, Terry Gamble tells the story of a young Native American girl, Rachel Winneppee. Rachel find herself in the employment of a wealthy family and becomes the caretaker of the family's son Woody who has lost a leg in World War II. Their relationship, which forms the core of the book's plotline is rendered with great care and originality. The story takes some unexpected turns as the lives of Woody and Rachel intertwine. At one point the story takes a deeply sorrowful turn, but by the end a hopeful and forward looking resolution is reached.

Read this book for the engrossing story, but as importantly, look for the character development. These are people you care about. Several of the minor characters, such as Ada and Bliss, two older women who look after Rachel are delightfully
drawn and help keep the book balanced between its somewhat somber central theme and more lighthearted moments.

It is obvious that Gamble is at home with language; one only wishes that some of the descriptions of the northern Michigan land and seascapes were allowed to be a little longer. The writing is, however, elegant and spare, often poetic, especially when probing the inner lives of the people who inhabit the book. This is a wonderful read.

I was spellbound by this book- the depth & originality of the characters, the nuance in which their drama unfolds, the richness of the different worlds & settings they inhabit. A great read!!

In Terry Gamble's novel, The Water Dancers, a poor orphan teen Native American comes to work in a family summer home in post-war summer 1945, and finds her life changed through her assignment to the family's emotionally shattered son Woody, who has lost a leg in the war. Woody's pain blends with her sad understanding to bring about an uncertain romance which will change both their lives.

Our local library reading club is here in the San Francisco Bay area, where the author of "The Water Dancers," Ms Terry Gamble, resides. We were able to enlist her the other evening to join our review session covering her novel. It's too bad that most readers will never enjoy the good fortune of a somewhat informal chat with an author while discussing one of her recent works and how she goes about her craft. It provides a very different perspective.

I first read "The Water Dancers" six months ago and recommended it to our reading club. In preparation for Ms Gamble's attendance, I gave the novel a second reading last week, which for me is always the ultimate test of a novel's real worth. During a second read do the characters still seem interesting and fresh? Does a rereading of the dialog provide new character insights? Are there elements of prose and style and structure that went unnoticed during the initial read because attentions were so fixed on plot points? And for this reader, "The Water Dancers" holds up as an exceptional novel, even with a second reading.

Potential readers out there can gather the main plot points from any number of other reviews, so I won't bother to repeat them here. I only gave "The Water Dancers" four stars, but I'm a hard grader. Most of the novels I pick up and read these days rate two or perhaps three stars, and often that's because I'm feeling compassionate. One of the principle strengths of this novel is the way the Indian characters are drawn. I read a lot of novels covering the Native American cultures, and I've grown more than tired of the patronizing way Indian characters always seem to be presented with extra sensory mystical insights into the religious beyond, and the supernatural powers to spot the Great White Buffalo stampeding across the distant plain. Terry Gamble's characters of Rachel Winnapee, Ben Winnapee and Honda Jackson act, talk and feel to the reader like real people experiencing and reacting to the real world. Two of the novel's most powerful scenes occur in the beginning and ending, when Rachel's grandmother and Lydia March appear to Rachel as ghost-like apparitions rising into the sky as they die in the flames of their burning houses. And yet these scenes did not feel to a reader like something from The X-Files.

On the other hand, the white characters (with the exception of Ada and Bliss and Hank) seem so uniform in their physical, intellectual and emotional weaknesses that, for me, it becomes the principle shortcoming of the novel. At times the novel seems to incorporate the cliché that white people descended from wealth are evil by definition. By the end of the novel Ms Gamble is able to imbue some of these characters with more depth and understanding, but I wish she would have done it from the beginning. And then again, maybe that's just me.

I loved that the sparse physical descriptions of the characters worked so well as a contrast to the detailed descriptions of all the surrounding physical geography. Ms Gamble's repeated descriptions of Rachel's hair as wild and "unbraided" was one of the subtle guides to our understanding of Rachel.

But the real reason to pick up and read "The Water Dancers" is the prose. The writing within the novel is exceptional. Sentence structures are direct, rhythmic, paced, and always graceful. Those adjectives don't seem to fit together, but Terry Gamble's prose makes it all work. The novel was such an easy read that at the end you will need to stop and draw a breath to remind yourself just how good it was.

Ms Gamble has another novel due out next year. So pick up "The Water Dancers" now, enjoy the read, and wait with baited breath like the rest of us for her upcoming novel.

Summers in Northern Michigan, river rock, lakes, summer people of privelege and the invisible downstairs servants, brought to lyrical life. What happens when they come together has tectonic ccnsequences. The relationships span pre WW11 to post Viet Nam eras. Characters I hated to leave when I got to that last page.

I spent summers in Northern Michigan and Ms. Gambles' descriptions of the forests and waters there made made me feel and see the land, with it's shadow bands of Native Americans come to light and life. Gorgeous!

With sparse but image-rich prose, this book follows the lives of two "tribes" -- one wealthy and white, one poor and Native American -- through two generations. Full of loss, longing, love and redemption, this book hung with me long after I (too-quickly) finished it. The place is vividly rendered, the characters believeable. Though sometimes brushing the edge of sentimentality, Gamble is never preachy, and her rendering of class is right on.

I loved this book. Terry Gamble writes beautifully, sometimes breathtakingly so. Sometimes I had to put the book down and close my eyes, to savor the images she creates. I fell in love with every character, even Lydia March, the head of the March household, who proves to be a formidable foe for Rachel. Ms. Gamble's sense of place is strong and true and by the time I finished the book, I felt as though I'd lived at Buck's Point, that I knew Rachel and Ben and Lydia and Woody. Terry Gamble is a wonderful writer, and I can't wait for her next book.

While the thematic element of star-crossed lovers is definitely not a new one, Ms. Gamble's characters are written with a depth of feeling that is revealed with a subtlety that makes this novel stand out from others of similar plot-line. The reader journeys back to 1945, on the shores of Lake Michigan, where seventeen-year-old Native American Rachel Winnapee works as a maid at the summer home of the March family. Her duties change quickly when the younger March son, Woody, comes home from World War II, with part of one leg missing, and the promise of morphine shots to fill his upcoming days.

At the request of Mrs. March, Rachel becomes Woody's nurse, and it is her zest for life that lifts Woody out of his depression and begins their secret affair, their blissful moments of happiness written with an expression of joy that is suitably absent from the rest of the novel. With Woody slated to take over the bank when his father retires and marry the ethereal blonde Elizabeth, there is little future for Rachel and Woody, when their summer of bliss suffers an abrupt ending.

Spanning almost three decades, this read is a testament to the enduring power of real love amidst the trappings of cultural differences and prejudices. And the compelling force that gives impetus to this novel is the gradual revealing of long buried lies and secrets proving the humanity of all the players, regardless of wealth or social status.