There’s more than one way for a family to deal with generational trauma. And there’s more than one way for a family to respond to systemic racism and the climate crisis.
Mary Annaïse Heglar’s debut novel, Troubled Waters, tells an intense, compelling, and deeply personal story at the intersection of these themes. After listening to her on the Hot Take and Spill podcasts, and reading her essays about climate justice and new children’s book, I was eager to read her novel to see how these themes play out in her fiction. Now that I’ve read it, I’m pleased to report that this novel will be a great read for people interested in climate justice themes, racial justice themes, Southern characters and settings, strong women protagonists, and compelling literature in general.
In Troubled Waters, a nineteen-year-old Black college student named Corinne has her whole world turned upside down when her brother back home dies in an accident on an oil boat in Mississippi. The fact that he died on an oil boat inspires her to make the connection between his death and the present and future death and suffering caused by the climate crisis. Her grief drives her to take action to commemorate her brother’s loss and hold the oil industry accountable. Her activism brings up older family trauma, including her grandmother’s painful childhood experiences desegregating the public school she attended in Nashville.
There’s plenty to praise about this novel. The heavy focus on three main characters – Corrine, her grandmother Cora, and to a lesser extent her uncle Harold – creates space for a deep dive into their individual and family history, motivations, and perspectives. This breathing room is especially important in a novel where climate grief and the generational trauma caused by white supremacy and systemic racism play such a central role in the story. We get to know these characters, their wounds, their conflicts, and their joys so well that their struggles and triumphs have that much more depth.
Some of the best climate fiction I’ve read lately takes the exact opposite approach. Other prominent climate fiction novels like Termination Shock, Ministry for the Future, and The Deluge introduce an expansive ensemble cast of characters whose individual stories unfold in the context of a sprawling narrative that leans into its speculative elements and demands an astronomical page count to realize its full vision.
As much as I enjoyed those other novels, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to read a climate fiction novel like Troubled Waters that was more heavily character-based and more traditionally literary in its grounding in present-day characters and their past experiences. There are so many climate stories to tell in the here and now – a fact that often gets overlooked when addressing a societal crisis with such profound implications for our individual and collective futures. And the world sorely needs more stories like this – deeply personal stories that unfold at the intersection between climate justice and racial justice.
Troubled Waters is also a love letter to the Black Southern women at the center of the story. Cora is a Black grandmother who survived deeply traumatic experiences during the process of school desegregation. These experiences have left her with emotional scars that still loom large in her life to the present day. She wants to shield her granddaughter from similar or worse suffering at the hands of white police and the racist system that employs them. Her granddaughter, Corrine, is a young Black woman who is struggling to come to terms with that generational trauma while also processing the newer trauma of her brother’s death and her grief over the climate crisis. She doesn’t want to burden her grandmother with the weight of her climate grief and climate activism because she knows that Cora has already endured so much and already done her part for justice during the school desegregation era in Nashville.
All of the supporting details of the story serve both to add depth and to celebrate aspects of Corrine, Cora, and Harold’s Black Southern culture: the food and its role in the family, the references to classic songs by Black artists, the descriptions of the places where the story unfolds, the hummingbird garden where Cora finds comfort and healing in her moments of grief.
Most of all, what makes Troubled Waters such a good read is that it tells a compelling story. All of the social justice themes and cultural references in the world won’t make a novel compelling for most readers without quality storytelling at the heart of the novel. With that storytelling present, the novel becomes both a moving experience and an entry point for the reader into the themes.
The three main characters – Corrine, Cora, and Harold – all experience their trauma and grief in different ways. The story of how each of them lives with their grief, and works through their grief, is a powerful tale of generational trauma and healing. And the discussion questions at the end of the book help ensure that readers reflect on the novel’s themes of climate justice, racial justice, and generational trauma and healing instead of just reading the book for entertainment and moving on to the next novel on their reading list. This is true whether someone is reading the book on their own or reading and discussing it with a class or book club.
Reading Troubled Waters will give many readers the dual benefit of reading a thoroughly compelling tale and reflecting on broader issues in our communities and our world.
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