The Water Seeker [Hardcover]

Kimberly Willis Holt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2010 | Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Amos Kincaid is the son of a dowser – a person gifted in knowing how to “find” water deep in the ground.  As a young person, Amos doesn’t reveal his gift to others; he’s not sure he wants the burden.  But through his experiences growing up and crossing the Oregon Trail, Amos learns about life’s harsh realities, especially the pain in losing loved ones.  As he cares for those around him, Amos comes to accept his dowsing fate.  This epic novel is a fascinating period piece about the westward expansion and one man’s destiny as he searches for love and family.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8 Born near Independence, MO, in 1833, Amos Kincaid has a difficult life from the start: his mother dies giving birth to him, his father is an often-absent trapper, and his early years are punctuated by illness, tense encounters with Native Americans, and hard work. When Jake finally returns to reclaim the growing boy, he takes him on one of the many pioneer trains heading to Oregon while hired on as a scout. Both Jake and Amos have a gift for dowsing water, but neither this nor other magical realism elements (such as manifestations of Amos's dead mother) add much to the story, which is at its best when detailing the harsh and often deadly conditions faced on the way to the Willamette Valley. However, Amos's coming-of-age story, shaped by the trials he faces and the influences of friends, relatives, and loves, is a well-developed character study. Libraries needing historical fiction will find this a worthy addition. Christi Esterle, Parker Library, CO
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From Booklist

Stretched over 20 years and 2,000 miles, award-winning author Holt's latest novel is a sweeping story of westward expansion, beginning in 1833 Missouri when a young mother dies in childbirth. Her baby, Amos, survives and is raised by in-laws until his trapper father, Jake, returns. So begin years of hardscrabble pioneer life as Amos shuttles between friends, neighbors, and relatives, finally joining Jake and his Otoe Indian wife on a wagon train headed for Oregon. Scenes of magical realism add rich texture but aren't always well integrated, and the novel's episodic pacing is uneven. Yet Holt creates a moving, palpable sense of pioneer life in graceful prose that occasionally reads like poetry. And her memorable characters' stories raise powerful questions about how lives are shaped: by chance, skill, inherited gifts (both Jake and Amos are dowsers, who can sense where water is located underground), and love that transcends generations and even mortality. Grades 7-10. --Gillian Engberg

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); First Edition edition (May 11, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805080201
• ISBN-13: 978-0805080209
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #482,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a Navy brat that lived all over the world including Guam, Paris and the New Orleans Westbank. Even though we moved a lot, my emotional home was always Forest Hill, Louisiana, a little town in the piney-woods where my grandparents lived. I married a Texan and have lived in Texas most of my adult life. Both states feel like home now. I like to say that Louisiana gave me roots and Texas gave me branches.

I started writing on yellow legal pads and didn't own a computer until after I'd been writing a year. Maybe that's why I still write my first drafts by hand.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The pinnacle of author/reader marksmanship., March 1, 2011

By 

Michael A. Corneiller (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Water Seeker (Audio CD)

Bulls-eye. I am a huge fan of author James Lee Burke and of his favorite reader, Will Patton. To me this combination represents the best literature has to offer.

But hold your horses. Although I am six times older than the target audience of this book, I not only thoroughly enjoyed the flawless prose of Kimberly Willis Holt, and the vocal renderings of the KING of audio book readers, Mr. Patton, but would highly recommend THE WATER SEEKER to anyone of any age that enjoys books.

The journey taken by young Amos, named after his mother hears a bird cry out that name, is beautifully rendered and I found myself longing for the era brilliantly captured by this remarkable author. It is an era of adventure and newness and innocence as families cope with meager possessions and travel westward with hopes and dreams to make new and better lives.

Will Patton has never sounded better and his performance makes this a MUST listen.

Read this book, by all means, but if you don't listen to this book, you will miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience two masters at their best.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wide-ranging adventure with a little romance mixed in, May 21, 2010

By 

M. Knapp "Maggie Knapp" (Fort Worth, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Water Seeker (Hardcover)

This sprawling adventure introduces the reader first to Jake (a dowser) and then Jake's son, Amos, who has the water-seeking gift as well. The story covers about 40 years and a lot of sadness and hardship mixed in with historical events, adventure and a romance or two. Set from 1833 to 1859, through the untamed lands from roughly Arkansas to Oregon, Ms. Holt's generous story follows several generations of family and neighbors as they are born, live their interesting lives, and die. I have very much enjoyed Ms. Holt's books for elementary and middle school readers - this is one I'd recommend to 8th or 9th grade readers looking for frontier adventure with depth and breadth and "relationships".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nope, no cigar, June 29, 2011

By 

Kristin (Western WA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Water Seeker (Hardcover)

The glowing reviews for this book make me wonder if I read something different from the other reviewers. I found "The Water Seeker" to be uninspired, with characters it was difficult to get to know, or really to care much about. In large part this is due to inexcusably lazy sterotyping in lieu of actual character creation: there is a backwoods husband who's always saying "shoot dang", an escaped slave who says "if you works at it some, da fiddle will sing", and a (presumed to be) stuck up, "refined" girl from England named Gwendolyn Winthrop.

There are several passages in the book that could have been heartbreaking, but instead they were merely clumsy and impersonal. I often find simple prose to be the most effective (and affecting) since it strips away unnecessary layers from its meaning, but this only works if the prose itself is packed with meaning and very carefully chosen. The prose in "The Water Seeker" reads more like an impassive cataloguing of events, and when it tries to describe human emotion it reads like it's been written by someone who's never actually experienced those emotions.

Dowsing is meant to be a motif or thread running through this story, but it never makes it. Nothing in the story is deeply tied to dowsing, and most of the story could have been the same in plot and impact if it were about someone with any other vocation.

Lastly, for historical fiction Holt does a very poor job of bringing history to life. The details of Oregon Trail traveling may be correct, but her characters in the 1830s and 1840s talk and relate to each other like people in the current day would.