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Gathering of Waters
Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi--a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.
Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit.
Forty years later, after the death of her husband, Tass returns to Money and fantasy takes flesh when Emmett Till's spirit is finally released from the dank, dark waters of the Tallahatchie River. The two lovers are reunited, bringing the story to an enchanting and profound conclusion.
Gathering of Waters mines the truth about Money, Mississippi, as well as the town's families, and threads their history over decades. The bare-bones realism--both disturbing and riveting--combined with a magical realm in which ghosts have the final say, is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's Beloved.
258 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 31, 2012
317 people are currently reading
5321 people want to read
About the author
Bernice L. McFadden
21 books2,247 followersBERNICE L. McFADDEN is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels including Praise Song for the Butterflies (Long listed for the 2019 Women's Prize in Fiction ) The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction) Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012) and Glorious . She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of four awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA).
McFadden has also penned five novels under the pseudonym: Geneva Holliday
She is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Tulane University in New Orleans. She is at work on her sixteenth novel.
McFadden has also penned five novels under the pseudonym: Geneva Holliday
She is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Tulane University in New Orleans. She is at work on her sixteenth novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 458 reviews
August 21, 2012
Since I finished this book, it has haunted me.
As I move through my day, images, phrases, characters, tensions, joys, and sorrows from Gathering of Waters sneak up on me when I least expect them. This is probably only fitting, as McFadden presents in her novel a multi-generational story, told by the town of Money, Mississippi (yes, by the town), that seamlessly combines beautifully clear and elegantly simple descriptions of everyday life among black families living in Money, with incandescently beautiful examinations of the spiritual elements of these families’ lives. Throughout, McFadden focuses on the human spirit, love and hatred, good and evil, and the ways in which souls can transcend the ravages of racism, hatred, fear, and evil.
From the time you open the cover and take in the novel’s opening lines, you know you are reading a special book:
“I am Money. Money Mississippi.
“I have had many selves and have been many things. My beginning was not a conception, but the result of a growing, stretching, and expanding, which took place over thousands of years.
“I have been figments of imaginations, shadows and sudden movements seen out of the corner of your eye. I have been dewdrops, falling stars, silence, flowers, and snails.
“For a time, I lived as a beating heart, another life found me swimming upstream toward a home nestled in my memory. Once, I was a language that died. I have been sunlight, snowdrifts, and sweet babies’ breath. But today, however, for you and for this story, I am Money. Money Mississippi.” (12)
McFadden introduces significant key themes in these opening paragraphs. A central concept in the novel is animism, the belief that there is no separation between the spiritual and the material world, that souls are contained in plants, rocks, water, as well as in humans, and that souls can pass from generation to generation in different hosts. This belief system provides a thematic framework for the novel, generating not only tensions and conflicts across generations, but also strong ties to places, to people, to spirits moving among us. There’s a true sense of people being part of a place, of an integrity and wholeness lying beneath the appearance that human existence is fleeting. This sense of connection is profound throughout the novel.
McFadden also develops Gathering of Waters with two key historical anchors: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, and the murder of Emmett Till in the summer of 1955. Both events were devastating events, and both are tied to racism. That connection may seem clearer in the case of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered at the age of 14 by white racists, who alleged that Emmett had whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. Emmett’s body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River and later discovered, leading to a sensational trial, at which the defendants were acquitted. In spite of this miscarriage of justice, the extensive media coverage of the event brought the serious consequences of racism to the attention of the American public. The murder was one of many events leading to the development of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Great Flood of 1927 is another catastrophic event in US history that reveals the racism at the heart of American society. The flood disproportionately harmed the black communities living on the Mississippi delta, as they were not protected by government flood control policies, which were developed with big banks and industrial powers in minds. Levees themselves were first built by slaves, and later by black convicts and work gangs. (Black work gangs also were forced at gunpoint to reinforce levees as the waters rose during the floods of 1927.) In addition, local authorities along the Mississippi River had ensured that black communities were segregated into less desirable locations, including areas most likely to flood. Once the floods started, local authorities concentrated their resources on rescuing white families, leaving blacks to fend for themselves. Refugee camps were segregated, and the ones designated for blacks were poorly provisioned and rife with disease. (For more details, please see Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.)
McFadden works these historical events into the fabric of her story, providing clear historical context for readers. The power in the novel, though, stems just as much, if not more, from McFadden’s beautiful descriptions of everyday life for the Hilson family, as it does from dramatic historical events. This is a story about the complex relationships and tensions passing from generation to generation, heightened by the brutal inequities of a racist society. At the same time, though, I was left with a strong sense of the salvation to be found in love, which also passes over time and space. McFadden’s incandescent prose underscores the wonder of first love, “To Tass, Emmett was everywhere and present in all things. He was all over her mind, pressed into the seams between the floorboards, glowing amidst the stars, and there in the sweet swirl of sugar, milk, and butter in her morning bowl of farina." (156) We see the love of true friends, outlasting time and distance. We share in the concerned (and sometimes exasperated) affection of adult children for their mother. And, most dramatically, in the novel’s climactic ending, we are left with a moving, and magical, example of the transcendence and timelessness of love.
This is a beautifully written novel, which embraces the magic of everyday life, and celebrates the permanence of souls. This is an important novel, for the ways in which it provides a perspective on America’s difficult past, while providing a way to understand past, present, and future, not in abstract terms, but in the most human terms possible. This is a novel that I hope you read, and hold close to you, and pass on to others.
As I move through my day, images, phrases, characters, tensions, joys, and sorrows from Gathering of Waters sneak up on me when I least expect them. This is probably only fitting, as McFadden presents in her novel a multi-generational story, told by the town of Money, Mississippi (yes, by the town), that seamlessly combines beautifully clear and elegantly simple descriptions of everyday life among black families living in Money, with incandescently beautiful examinations of the spiritual elements of these families’ lives. Throughout, McFadden focuses on the human spirit, love and hatred, good and evil, and the ways in which souls can transcend the ravages of racism, hatred, fear, and evil.
From the time you open the cover and take in the novel’s opening lines, you know you are reading a special book:
“I am Money. Money Mississippi.
“I have had many selves and have been many things. My beginning was not a conception, but the result of a growing, stretching, and expanding, which took place over thousands of years.
“I have been figments of imaginations, shadows and sudden movements seen out of the corner of your eye. I have been dewdrops, falling stars, silence, flowers, and snails.
“For a time, I lived as a beating heart, another life found me swimming upstream toward a home nestled in my memory. Once, I was a language that died. I have been sunlight, snowdrifts, and sweet babies’ breath. But today, however, for you and for this story, I am Money. Money Mississippi.” (12)
McFadden introduces significant key themes in these opening paragraphs. A central concept in the novel is animism, the belief that there is no separation between the spiritual and the material world, that souls are contained in plants, rocks, water, as well as in humans, and that souls can pass from generation to generation in different hosts. This belief system provides a thematic framework for the novel, generating not only tensions and conflicts across generations, but also strong ties to places, to people, to spirits moving among us. There’s a true sense of people being part of a place, of an integrity and wholeness lying beneath the appearance that human existence is fleeting. This sense of connection is profound throughout the novel.
McFadden also develops Gathering of Waters with two key historical anchors: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, and the murder of Emmett Till in the summer of 1955. Both events were devastating events, and both are tied to racism. That connection may seem clearer in the case of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered at the age of 14 by white racists, who alleged that Emmett had whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. Emmett’s body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River and later discovered, leading to a sensational trial, at which the defendants were acquitted. In spite of this miscarriage of justice, the extensive media coverage of the event brought the serious consequences of racism to the attention of the American public. The murder was one of many events leading to the development of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Great Flood of 1927 is another catastrophic event in US history that reveals the racism at the heart of American society. The flood disproportionately harmed the black communities living on the Mississippi delta, as they were not protected by government flood control policies, which were developed with big banks and industrial powers in minds. Levees themselves were first built by slaves, and later by black convicts and work gangs. (Black work gangs also were forced at gunpoint to reinforce levees as the waters rose during the floods of 1927.) In addition, local authorities along the Mississippi River had ensured that black communities were segregated into less desirable locations, including areas most likely to flood. Once the floods started, local authorities concentrated their resources on rescuing white families, leaving blacks to fend for themselves. Refugee camps were segregated, and the ones designated for blacks were poorly provisioned and rife with disease. (For more details, please see Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.)
McFadden works these historical events into the fabric of her story, providing clear historical context for readers. The power in the novel, though, stems just as much, if not more, from McFadden’s beautiful descriptions of everyday life for the Hilson family, as it does from dramatic historical events. This is a story about the complex relationships and tensions passing from generation to generation, heightened by the brutal inequities of a racist society. At the same time, though, I was left with a strong sense of the salvation to be found in love, which also passes over time and space. McFadden’s incandescent prose underscores the wonder of first love, “To Tass, Emmett was everywhere and present in all things. He was all over her mind, pressed into the seams between the floorboards, glowing amidst the stars, and there in the sweet swirl of sugar, milk, and butter in her morning bowl of farina." (156) We see the love of true friends, outlasting time and distance. We share in the concerned (and sometimes exasperated) affection of adult children for their mother. And, most dramatically, in the novel’s climactic ending, we are left with a moving, and magical, example of the transcendence and timelessness of love.
This is a beautifully written novel, which embraces the magic of everyday life, and celebrates the permanence of souls. This is an important novel, for the ways in which it provides a perspective on America’s difficult past, while providing a way to understand past, present, and future, not in abstract terms, but in the most human terms possible. This is a novel that I hope you read, and hold close to you, and pass on to others.
June 6, 2016
"Dearest, you cannot bury a soul! Souls are light, darkness, and air."- Bernice L. McFadden, Gathering of Waters
I love it when I read a page of a book and I instantly know I'm going to love it. I've been in a sort of fiction reading slump and this book got me right out of it. It's one of the most enjoyable books I've read all year, hard to put into words how it touched me but it really did.
It all starts in Money, Mississippi, with the death of a hooker, Esther, whose vindictive spirit inhabits a little girl and one of Emmett Till's murderers, the bad eggs of the book. I read this book in a few hours, thoroughly engrossed in its intelligently woven together story-lines that spanned generations. It mixes together magical realism, history and a love story, so utterly well. There was amazing dialogue and a story-line that pulled at my heartstrings a lot, especially the story of Emmett Till, and his death, that was dramatized in this book in such an, I'm not sure how to put it, honouring way? It makes so much sense to me to memorialize those people who are no longer here to tell their own stories, as a way to always remember them.
Emmett Till's fictionalized love story was really sweet and a reminder me how an innocent life was lost and would never experience all of the things he should have, all due to racist evil:
"To Tass, Emmett was everywhere and present in all things. He was all over her mind, pressed into the seams between the floorboards, glowing amidst the stars and there in the sweet swirl of sugar, milk and butter in her morning bowl of farina."
History is something that doesn't go away, and I like how this book included the historical context , because clearly things don't occur in a vacuum; everything is connected. History has shaped the present and things don't just disappear without being dealt with; they permeate to the present. The history of racism is responsible for a lot of present-day woes. The flood after Hurricane Katrina is mentioned in this book, as is the Great Mississippi flood .Water was a motif throughout the book, it seemed like water both reveals the evil but also gets rid of it.
One of the most shocking things in this book for me were Till's murderers; reading up on how they benefitted financially from the murder reminds me of another person who shall remain unnamed. And the repercussion of their awful act is that it affected the entire country :
"J.W. and Roy didn't just snatch the childhood away from Emmett; they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi."
I'd definitely recommend this book, not only for the wit, great storytelling, but also the beautiful writing.
An excerpt from Audre Lorde's poem, "Afterimages"
I inherited Jackson, Mississippi.
For my majority it gave me Emmett Till
his 15 years puffed out like bruises
on plump boy-cheeks
his only Mississippi summer
whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie
as a white girl passed him in the street
and he was baptized my son forever
in the midnight waters of the Pearl.
His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year
when I walked through a northern summer
my eyes averted
from each corner's photographies
newspapers protest posters magazines
Police Story, Confidential, True
the avid insistence of detail
pretending insight or information
the length of gash across the dead boy's loins
his grieving mother's lamentation
the severed lips, how many burns
his gouged out eyes
sewed shut upon the screaming covers
louder than life
all over
the veiled warning, the secret relish
of a black child's mutilated body
fingered by street-corner eyes
bruise upon livid bruise
and wherever I looked that summer
I learned to be at home with children's blood
with savored violence
with pictures of black broken flesh
used, crumpled, and discarded
lying amid the sidewalk refuse
like a raped woman's face.
I love it when I read a page of a book and I instantly know I'm going to love it. I've been in a sort of fiction reading slump and this book got me right out of it. It's one of the most enjoyable books I've read all year, hard to put into words how it touched me but it really did.
It all starts in Money, Mississippi, with the death of a hooker, Esther, whose vindictive spirit inhabits a little girl and one of Emmett Till's murderers, the bad eggs of the book. I read this book in a few hours, thoroughly engrossed in its intelligently woven together story-lines that spanned generations. It mixes together magical realism, history and a love story, so utterly well. There was amazing dialogue and a story-line that pulled at my heartstrings a lot, especially the story of Emmett Till, and his death, that was dramatized in this book in such an, I'm not sure how to put it, honouring way? It makes so much sense to me to memorialize those people who are no longer here to tell their own stories, as a way to always remember them.
Emmett Till's fictionalized love story was really sweet and a reminder me how an innocent life was lost and would never experience all of the things he should have, all due to racist evil:
"To Tass, Emmett was everywhere and present in all things. He was all over her mind, pressed into the seams between the floorboards, glowing amidst the stars and there in the sweet swirl of sugar, milk and butter in her morning bowl of farina."
History is something that doesn't go away, and I like how this book included the historical context , because clearly things don't occur in a vacuum; everything is connected. History has shaped the present and things don't just disappear without being dealt with; they permeate to the present. The history of racism is responsible for a lot of present-day woes. The flood after Hurricane Katrina is mentioned in this book, as is the Great Mississippi flood .Water was a motif throughout the book, it seemed like water both reveals the evil but also gets rid of it.
One of the most shocking things in this book for me were Till's murderers; reading up on how they benefitted financially from the murder reminds me of another person who shall remain unnamed. And the repercussion of their awful act is that it affected the entire country :
"J.W. and Roy didn't just snatch the childhood away from Emmett; they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi."
I'd definitely recommend this book, not only for the wit, great storytelling, but also the beautiful writing.
An excerpt from Audre Lorde's poem, "Afterimages"
I inherited Jackson, Mississippi.
For my majority it gave me Emmett Till
his 15 years puffed out like bruises
on plump boy-cheeks
his only Mississippi summer
whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie
as a white girl passed him in the street
and he was baptized my son forever
in the midnight waters of the Pearl.
His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year
when I walked through a northern summer
my eyes averted
from each corner's photographies
newspapers protest posters magazines
Police Story, Confidential, True
the avid insistence of detail
pretending insight or information
the length of gash across the dead boy's loins
his grieving mother's lamentation
the severed lips, how many burns
his gouged out eyes
sewed shut upon the screaming covers
louder than life
all over
the veiled warning, the secret relish
of a black child's mutilated body
fingered by street-corner eyes
bruise upon livid bruise
and wherever I looked that summer
I learned to be at home with children's blood
with savored violence
with pictures of black broken flesh
used, crumpled, and discarded
lying amid the sidewalk refuse
like a raped woman's face.
October 4, 2020
For the Love of Money
I was hooked the moment I began reading this book, this, for its beautiful, lyrical prose. How did I ever miss reading this author whose prose kept me going even though I found myself judging a few of the characters for their sexual indiscretions and for the author’s sexually explicit scenes? Then I realized that it was like the flood in Noah’s day where God had destroyed mankind, but in this case, the Mississippi flood of 1927.
Then Emmet Till stepped into the novel, and while I had known of him, I didn’t know his story, a tragic story of cruelty and just as the flood in Noah’s day, unwarranted. His stepping in changed the mood of the book. And when I put the book down, I sat with it for a moment, not thinking. To think could have brought tears and anger over the injustice. Then when that moment was over, I realized that I had read a great novel.
It began in Money, Mississippi along the banks of the Tallahatchie River, with the whites getting the best land, its view, the south side, and the blacks the north. It begins with Coal, a young white boy who fell in love with a beautiful black girl, a love he could not have. It continued on through generations, through marriages and infidelities, and with the death of Ester, who was considered a whore, and whose soul then entered another body, just to cause havoc, just to allow her to feel again.
As it began in Money and went on to Detroit, it came back to Money where it all ended, except for the lives of the ghosts who wandered as they pleased, and who loved as they never could before.
I was hooked the moment I began reading this book, this, for its beautiful, lyrical prose. How did I ever miss reading this author whose prose kept me going even though I found myself judging a few of the characters for their sexual indiscretions and for the author’s sexually explicit scenes? Then I realized that it was like the flood in Noah’s day where God had destroyed mankind, but in this case, the Mississippi flood of 1927.
Then Emmet Till stepped into the novel, and while I had known of him, I didn’t know his story, a tragic story of cruelty and just as the flood in Noah’s day, unwarranted. His stepping in changed the mood of the book. And when I put the book down, I sat with it for a moment, not thinking. To think could have brought tears and anger over the injustice. Then when that moment was over, I realized that I had read a great novel.
It began in Money, Mississippi along the banks of the Tallahatchie River, with the whites getting the best land, its view, the south side, and the blacks the north. It begins with Coal, a young white boy who fell in love with a beautiful black girl, a love he could not have. It continued on through generations, through marriages and infidelities, and with the death of Ester, who was considered a whore, and whose soul then entered another body, just to cause havoc, just to allow her to feel again.
As it began in Money and went on to Detroit, it came back to Money where it all ended, except for the lives of the ghosts who wandered as they pleased, and who loved as they never could before.
January 30, 2012
I worried that there would be no one to take J. California Cooper's place. I thought Bernice McFadden might be the one when I read Glorious. After reading Gathering of Waters, I'm sure of it!
I've often said that reading a J. California Cooper book is like sitting on the porch listening to your grandmother tell you a story. Using lush words and phrases that make you long for those days, McFadden's latest will leave you breathless from start to end. Once you start Gathering of Waters, you won't want to put it down until you've finished it.
Warning: When I read and write about really good books, the words I'm looking for don't always come out right. So even if you can't feel it while reading this review, know that I was gushing over the greatness of this book while writing it.
Through narration by the town of Money, Mississippi, the reader is taken on a journey that explains the evil spirit that inflicted Roy Bryant, one of the men responsible for the murder of Emmett Till. Surely one would have to be evil to harm an innocent child the way the Bryant and his accomplices did, right?
We're first introduced to the spirit, which belonged to the town's recently deceased whore, early on when it comes back in the form of a little girl. When that child's mother can no longer control the monster that her daughter has become, she sends her to live with a preacher's family where her destructive ways reach far and wide. Eventually the spirit finds its way to another innocent child, this one a white boy brought back from the dead, who would eventually become the Roy Bryant who murdered Emmett Till.
Weaving history with fiction with surrealism left me absolutely fascinated with the way the author tied the stories of each person affected by this evil spirit together and then went a step further and tied it into water. Water is used often in literature to symbolize life, transformation, chaos or a cleansing. In Gathering of Waters, water is present at each milestone: Doll's transition, Roy's re-birth, Emmett's transition, Emmett's rebirth (of sorts), and Tass' transition. The culmination of the last two events brings forth one of the most chaotic events of present time. Water...who would have thought it could wreak such havoc.
I've often said that reading a J. California Cooper book is like sitting on the porch listening to your grandmother tell you a story. Using lush words and phrases that make you long for those days, McFadden's latest will leave you breathless from start to end. Once you start Gathering of Waters, you won't want to put it down until you've finished it.
Warning: When I read and write about really good books, the words I'm looking for don't always come out right. So even if you can't feel it while reading this review, know that I was gushing over the greatness of this book while writing it.
Through narration by the town of Money, Mississippi, the reader is taken on a journey that explains the evil spirit that inflicted Roy Bryant, one of the men responsible for the murder of Emmett Till. Surely one would have to be evil to harm an innocent child the way the Bryant and his accomplices did, right?
We're first introduced to the spirit, which belonged to the town's recently deceased whore, early on when it comes back in the form of a little girl. When that child's mother can no longer control the monster that her daughter has become, she sends her to live with a preacher's family where her destructive ways reach far and wide. Eventually the spirit finds its way to another innocent child, this one a white boy brought back from the dead, who would eventually become the Roy Bryant who murdered Emmett Till.
Weaving history with fiction with surrealism left me absolutely fascinated with the way the author tied the stories of each person affected by this evil spirit together and then went a step further and tied it into water. Water is used often in literature to symbolize life, transformation, chaos or a cleansing. In Gathering of Waters, water is present at each milestone: Doll's transition, Roy's re-birth, Emmett's transition, Emmett's rebirth (of sorts), and Tass' transition. The culmination of the last two events brings forth one of the most chaotic events of present time. Water...who would have thought it could wreak such havoc.
August 15, 2012
Gathering of Waters: Bernice L. McFadden's Embrace of the Seen and Unseen
Bernice McFadden
"I am Money. Money, Mississippi...
Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die."
It is unusual that I continue to be so haunted by a novel that I take days before I attempt to review it. But, I dare say, many a reader may find themselves under the same spell so artfully cast by Bernice L. McFadden.
Gathering of Waters takes its title from the Native American name for Mississippi, "many gathering of waters." McFadden reminds us that the Native Americans driven from their home and the Africans brought to the State by white men as slaves both believed in animism, the idea that souls inhabit all objects. Money, itself possesses a soul that follows three generations of its citizens from the 1920s into the Twenty-first Century.
Good and evil are palpable forces that inhabit the souls of those people. McFadden swirls through a history of violent and turbulent events beginning with the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. It is there we meet August Hilson, a minister, his family and a young girl, Doll, possessed by the spirit of Esther, a whore, whose throat was cut while plying her trade.
Doll's mother abandons her when she fails to exorcise Esther's spirit from her daughter's body. She gives her to August Hilson to raise. As Doll enters adolescence, Esther surfaces to seduce August. His wife divorces him. He marries Dolly who bears him two children, Paris and Hemmingway.
The Hilsons become homeless as a result of the Tulsa riots. During two days of violence, the Greenville District, known as the Black Wall Street of America, was burned to the ground. Over three hundred Blacks were murdered.
June 6-7, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma
August is summoned to Money, Mississippi, to pastor a church on Nigger Row. It is their salvation. However, August is horrified to discover a bite mark on Doll's upper thigh when her nightgown creeps up while she sleeps. Doll, possessed by Esther, has taken not only a black lover, but a white lover, as well, Cole Payne, a grocer who welcomes both black and white customers.
In 1927 Mississippi was struck by the great flood. On the bank of the Tallahatchie River, Money was caught in its path. August is swept away as he delivers his Good Friday sermon. Doll is not at church. She is in the arms of Cole Payne. As the gathering of waters rushes over Money, Doll is pulled under the water and Esther needs a new home.
After the flood
In the aftermath of the flood, two young men are rescuing survivors and pulling the dead from the river. They pull the body of a young boy, J.W. Milam from the water. At the funeral home, as the mortician prepares to embalm the boy, J.W. is resurrected. Esther lives on.
Hemmingway has a daughter, Tass. When Tass asks who her father is, Hemmingway tells her she is her mother and father. I leave it to the reader to discover Tass's paternity.
Money watches the Hilsons and the Bryants through the years. It is the summer of 1955. A young man from Chicago, Emmett Till, has come to Money to visit his grandparents. It's love at first sight for Tass and Emmett. But we know how that story ends.
Emmett Till at age 14
Emmett Till let out that infamous wolf whistle. McFadden tells us that Carolyn Bryant heard the whistle and asked Emmett to repeat it. J.W., the half brother of her husband, Roy Bryant, witnesses the whistle. He's a mean drunk, and confronts Carolyn and Roy. "Nothing? A nigger whistling at you is nothing?" Emmett's fate is sealed.
Where Emmett Whistled
Money simply recounts the kidnapping and killing of Emmett on August 24, 1955, the not guilty verdict at the trial of Milam and Bryant, and the audacity of Milam to brag of having committed the murder in an interview with Look Magazine. We learn the bitter taste of double jeopardy and rage over the injustice. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfe...
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
Tass marries, but always remembers Emmett. She moves to Detroit with her husband who works in the automobile industry. Following her husband's death, she returns to Money, to one final gathering of waters. It is 2005. Hurricane Katrina is churning in the Gulf of Mexico.
McFadden draws her cautionary tale to a stunning conclusion that still brings a lump to my throat. That may well be your reaction, too.
Jesmyn Ward, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Salvage the Bones, wrote in her New York Times review of Gathering of Waters,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/boo... , "Washing the Wounds," February 10, 2012, Sunday Book Review, New York Times.
McFadden beautifully reminds us of this:
That's good advice to remember long, long, after reading McFadden's haunting work. "Gathering of Waters" has earned every bit of praise it has garnered. Read it and pass it on.
Bernice McFadden
"I am Money. Money, Mississippi...
Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die."
It is unusual that I continue to be so haunted by a novel that I take days before I attempt to review it. But, I dare say, many a reader may find themselves under the same spell so artfully cast by Bernice L. McFadden.
Gathering of Waters takes its title from the Native American name for Mississippi, "many gathering of waters." McFadden reminds us that the Native Americans driven from their home and the Africans brought to the State by white men as slaves both believed in animism, the idea that souls inhabit all objects. Money, itself possesses a soul that follows three generations of its citizens from the 1920s into the Twenty-first Century.
Good and evil are palpable forces that inhabit the souls of those people. McFadden swirls through a history of violent and turbulent events beginning with the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. It is there we meet August Hilson, a minister, his family and a young girl, Doll, possessed by the spirit of Esther, a whore, whose throat was cut while plying her trade.
Doll's mother abandons her when she fails to exorcise Esther's spirit from her daughter's body. She gives her to August Hilson to raise. As Doll enters adolescence, Esther surfaces to seduce August. His wife divorces him. He marries Dolly who bears him two children, Paris and Hemmingway.
The Hilsons become homeless as a result of the Tulsa riots. During two days of violence, the Greenville District, known as the Black Wall Street of America, was burned to the ground. Over three hundred Blacks were murdered.
June 6-7, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma
August is summoned to Money, Mississippi, to pastor a church on Nigger Row. It is their salvation. However, August is horrified to discover a bite mark on Doll's upper thigh when her nightgown creeps up while she sleeps. Doll, possessed by Esther, has taken not only a black lover, but a white lover, as well, Cole Payne, a grocer who welcomes both black and white customers.
In 1927 Mississippi was struck by the great flood. On the bank of the Tallahatchie River, Money was caught in its path. August is swept away as he delivers his Good Friday sermon. Doll is not at church. She is in the arms of Cole Payne. As the gathering of waters rushes over Money, Doll is pulled under the water and Esther needs a new home.
After the flood
In the aftermath of the flood, two young men are rescuing survivors and pulling the dead from the river. They pull the body of a young boy, J.W. Milam from the water. At the funeral home, as the mortician prepares to embalm the boy, J.W. is resurrected. Esther lives on.
Hemmingway has a daughter, Tass. When Tass asks who her father is, Hemmingway tells her she is her mother and father. I leave it to the reader to discover Tass's paternity.
Money watches the Hilsons and the Bryants through the years. It is the summer of 1955. A young man from Chicago, Emmett Till, has come to Money to visit his grandparents. It's love at first sight for Tass and Emmett. But we know how that story ends.
Emmett Till at age 14
Emmett Till let out that infamous wolf whistle. McFadden tells us that Carolyn Bryant heard the whistle and asked Emmett to repeat it. J.W., the half brother of her husband, Roy Bryant, witnesses the whistle. He's a mean drunk, and confronts Carolyn and Roy. "Nothing? A nigger whistling at you is nothing?" Emmett's fate is sealed.
Where Emmett Whistled
Money simply recounts the kidnapping and killing of Emmett on August 24, 1955, the not guilty verdict at the trial of Milam and Bryant, and the audacity of Milam to brag of having committed the murder in an interview with Look Magazine. We learn the bitter taste of double jeopardy and rage over the injustice. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfe...
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
Tass marries, but always remembers Emmett. She moves to Detroit with her husband who works in the automobile industry. Following her husband's death, she returns to Money, to one final gathering of waters. It is 2005. Hurricane Katrina is churning in the Gulf of Mexico.
McFadden draws her cautionary tale to a stunning conclusion that still brings a lump to my throat. That may well be your reaction, too.
Jesmyn Ward, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Salvage the Bones, wrote in her New York Times review of Gathering of Waters,
"...McFadden works a kind of miracle — not only do they retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises...
This is where the real power of the narrative lies: not in the Mississippi River flooding 23,000 square miles, killing some 250 people in April 1927, and not in the awful, brutal death of a boy who later became a symbol of the civil rights movement, but in the richness and complexity of the characters, of the women of the Hilson family and the men, Emmett among them, who love them."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/boo... , "Washing the Wounds," February 10, 2012, Sunday Book Review, New York Times.
McFadden beautifully reminds us of this:
Whether you have embraced this tale as truth or fantasy; I hope you will take something away from having read it. I pray that you will become more sensitive to world around you, the seen and unseen. As you go about your lives, keep in mind that an evil act can ruin generations, and gestures of love and kindness will survive and thrive forever.
Choose wisely, dearest."
That's good advice to remember long, long, after reading McFadden's haunting work. "Gathering of Waters" has earned every bit of praise it has garnered. Read it and pass it on.
Read
August 24, 2011“In her new novel, Gathering of Waters, Bernice McFadden brings her own special vision to the unfortunate story of Emmett Till and his murder in Money, Mississippi. This moving and magical novel, which traces the generations leading up to and away from that horrible night in 1955, drew me in immediately and swept me along through its richly imagined world. I couldn’t stop reading, caught up as I was in that enticing place between truth and fantasy, the here-and-now and the what-was, the living and the dead, the ugliness and the beauty, the hatred and the love. What a rich chorus of voices Bernice McFadden has fashioned from this place called Money.”
--Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever
Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi—a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.
Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit.
Forty years later, after the death of her husband, Tass returns to Money and fantasy takes flesh when Emmett Till's spirit is finally released from the dank, dark waters of the Tallahatchie River. The two lovers are reunited, bringing the story to an enchanting and profound conclusion.
Gathering of Waters mines the truth about Money, Mississippi, as well as the Bryant and Hilson families, and threads their history over decades. The bare-bones realism—both disturbing and riveting—combined with a magical realm in which ghosts have the final say, is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's Beloved.
--Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever
Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi—a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.
Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit.
Forty years later, after the death of her husband, Tass returns to Money and fantasy takes flesh when Emmett Till's spirit is finally released from the dank, dark waters of the Tallahatchie River. The two lovers are reunited, bringing the story to an enchanting and profound conclusion.
Gathering of Waters mines the truth about Money, Mississippi, as well as the Bryant and Hilson families, and threads their history over decades. The bare-bones realism—both disturbing and riveting—combined with a magical realm in which ghosts have the final say, is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's Beloved.
November 13, 2016
After reading this book it will always stay on my mind. I never read a book where the town was the narrator...it was phenomenal! It took me threw the 1900s up until 2005. It focus on the multi-generations of one family. Before they even got to Emmett's Story, I was emotional drained. Then when his part came up....I was crying so hard..that I had to put the book down so I could calm down. The historical parts was The 1900 flood, Emmett story and Katrina. It also got me thinking about my soul....and the soul of others. when the body dies the Spirit lives on good or bad. It's not heavy on religion but it brings to light the what my parents told me and some see this book as magically but I believe!!
March 14, 2012
I grew up in the Jim Crow South. While Petersburg, Virginia was light-years away from Money, Mississippi, there were also lynchings in Virginia. Black Mothers of sons in Petersburg (and my mother had four sons) had reason to fear for their sons. Petersburg was an Army town as well as a college town with an HBCU which my four brothers attended. There was enough progressive activity in Petersburg that we might have been allowed some uppityness. Still there were lynchings.
I was old enough to remember Emmett Till. News about injustice in the black community traveled slowly. Jet Magazine was hand-delivered by the same young carriers who brought the black newspapers like the Journal & Guide. The news was months-old by the time we saw the horrific photos of Emmett Tills battered corpse.
I have followed Bernice McFadden's work for years, and her blogs for many months. When I read her early blurbs about this book, which would involve Emmett Till, I feared it would dredge up the old sadness and rage. But it didn't.
This is a magical book which weaves a tale told by the town of Money, Mississippi through generations starting in 1900. McFadden's prose is always so stunningly smooth, and packed with a powerful punch. The story reminds me of 2 Peter 3:8 "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." And that God will make it right "by and by." God and the river.
I was old enough to remember Emmett Till. News about injustice in the black community traveled slowly. Jet Magazine was hand-delivered by the same young carriers who brought the black newspapers like the Journal & Guide. The news was months-old by the time we saw the horrific photos of Emmett Tills battered corpse.
I have followed Bernice McFadden's work for years, and her blogs for many months. When I read her early blurbs about this book, which would involve Emmett Till, I feared it would dredge up the old sadness and rage. But it didn't.
This is a magical book which weaves a tale told by the town of Money, Mississippi through generations starting in 1900. McFadden's prose is always so stunningly smooth, and packed with a powerful punch. The story reminds me of 2 Peter 3:8 "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." And that God will make it right "by and by." God and the river.
February 2, 2015
I was thoroughly disappointing with this book! I am in no way a book writer, but I am definitely an avid reader. The plot summary of this book is misrepresenting. I borrowed it from the library after reading the indie cover, of course it was in a display announcing 'Best reads in 2012'. I have known about the poor teen, Emmett Till, who was murdered by white men in the 50's, but I did not know anything about his character or his personality. I thought this book would shed a light on that aspect of Emmet Till, especially if the book was that of a love story between him and a character by the name of Tass. I did not realize I had to read 156 pages into the story to finally have the author bring the doomed teen into it at chapter 22(and only briefly!), and that is how you as a reader, are drawn into this book-you wonder when in the heck are you going to read about the main characters!! The author did not do a good job keeping facts that she wrote in check & I found myself going 'huh?' a couple times.
This book was one of the few that I had to stop reading and look back a couple pages because of inconsistency in the writing, which threw me off. For example:
1)The book starts out in the early 1900's. One of the families that the author starts describing moved in to the town of Money, MS in 1921. The Hilson family have a daughter, 'Hemmingway'. Not a strange name at first, I thought it was attributed to the famed writer. Until I found out his writing didn't become popular until later. The Hilson son's name was 'Paris', perhaps the author herself has a fondness to the famed writer to choose names so tied closely together. Though; from everything I have ever read from this time period and the diverse cultures within the states, I would believe these names were not at all popular for black southern families to pick at that time period.
2)The reader is introduced to some sharecropper families, the white family named Payne and the black family named Johnson. As the author is giving a brief back story as how close these families were, on page 56 the author states that Cole Payne's mother 'Catherine' became ill and could not nurse him, so Sissy's Johnson's mother, Ethel, did the job.But on page 71, 'Barbara' is now Cole's mother & matriarch of the Payne family. Try as I might, I was not able to find between those pages 'Catherine''s death mentioned.
3)The somewhat main character, Tass, the reader finally introduced to in chapter 22(even if the synopsis of the book makes it sound as if the whole book is about Tass & Emmett). Then the author writes how Emmett is murdered in August 1955(TRUE FACT), when the character Tass is 15. According to the book two years later she still misses Emmett & a man named Maximilian is sweet on her. Her mother, Hemmingway, wants her to marry him because of his stable job & owning a home. The storyline goes on to describe how Tass waits until she graduates-clearly read in the book 'in a year'-to marry Max. One month after graduation she marries him. As a reader, I naturally assumed this month then would be June or July of 1958. Once they do marry, Max moves Tass to Detroit where he works. The author then says in May 1957 there is a late snow and Tass sees snow for the first time. BUT as a reader, you are taken backwards in a time line progression.
4)One of the greatest U.S.'s natural disasters and subsequent worst show of American government taking care of it's people during Hurricane Katrina & it's aftermath, the author turns it into a horrible tie in to the underlying wicked spirit of a dead whore. Don't even get me started on THAT part of story sub plot.
This book was one of the few that I had to stop reading and look back a couple pages because of inconsistency in the writing, which threw me off. For example:
1)The book starts out in the early 1900's. One of the families that the author starts describing moved in to the town of Money, MS in 1921. The Hilson family have a daughter, 'Hemmingway'. Not a strange name at first, I thought it was attributed to the famed writer. Until I found out his writing didn't become popular until later. The Hilson son's name was 'Paris', perhaps the author herself has a fondness to the famed writer to choose names so tied closely together. Though; from everything I have ever read from this time period and the diverse cultures within the states, I would believe these names were not at all popular for black southern families to pick at that time period.
2)The reader is introduced to some sharecropper families, the white family named Payne and the black family named Johnson. As the author is giving a brief back story as how close these families were, on page 56 the author states that Cole Payne's mother 'Catherine' became ill and could not nurse him, so Sissy's Johnson's mother, Ethel, did the job.But on page 71, 'Barbara' is now Cole's mother & matriarch of the Payne family. Try as I might, I was not able to find between those pages 'Catherine''s death mentioned.
3)The somewhat main character, Tass, the reader finally introduced to in chapter 22(even if the synopsis of the book makes it sound as if the whole book is about Tass & Emmett). Then the author writes how Emmett is murdered in August 1955(TRUE FACT), when the character Tass is 15. According to the book two years later she still misses Emmett & a man named Maximilian is sweet on her. Her mother, Hemmingway, wants her to marry him because of his stable job & owning a home. The storyline goes on to describe how Tass waits until she graduates-clearly read in the book 'in a year'-to marry Max. One month after graduation she marries him. As a reader, I naturally assumed this month then would be June or July of 1958. Once they do marry, Max moves Tass to Detroit where he works. The author then says in May 1957 there is a late snow and Tass sees snow for the first time. BUT as a reader, you are taken backwards in a time line progression.
4)One of the greatest U.S.'s natural disasters and subsequent worst show of American government taking care of it's people during Hurricane Katrina & it's aftermath, the author turns it into a horrible tie in to the underlying wicked spirit of a dead whore. Don't even get me started on THAT part of story sub plot.
May 24, 2013
this book was fantastic! McFadden managed magical realism, personification, symbolism, historical fiction all combined with a lyrical writing style. Wish I could give it 4,5 stars. I started to read and couldn't put it down. It's only 252 pages and reads very quickly. I was hesitant about the ending because when I read Glorious I loved the story but the ending was flat for me. This ending works although I'm not sure everyone will love. Will be putting up an in-depth review soon on my blog.
August 1, 2024
‘I am Money. Money Mississippi.’
The township of Money, Mississippi is the narrator of this story which focusses on the Hilson and Bryant families during the 20th century. While two significant and dreadful events - the destructive Mississippi flood of 1927 and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 - are part of this story, it’s the people who dominate the story. And it works because while readers as individuals may not believe in animism or in previous existence, how can we resist the voice of the town?
‘Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.’
The novel opens early in the 20th century, in Oklahoma, where a young girl named Doll is possessed by the spirit of a dead woman named Esther. Doll’s mother puts her up for adoption after an attempt to exorcise Esther fails, and Doll (and the story) move to Money, Mississippi. Under the influence of Esther’s spirit, Doll grows up to be a manipulative woman capable of using sex and theft to achieve her objectives. There is a nicer side of Doll, but Esther’s spirit is too strong for that side to dominate for long. Doll has a daughter, Hemmingway, who comes to despise her.
After the 1927 flood, Hemmingway becomes the focal character. Her daughter, Tass, meets and falls in love with Emmett Till during the summer of 1955. Sometime after Emmett Till is murdered, Tass marries, moves away to Detroit and has her own family. Emmett’s memory, and his spirit, is never very far away from her. And Esther’s spirit? It took another direction.
As I reflect on the story while writing this review, there are so many aspects of the story that should not have worked for me, that should have prevented my being caught up and lost in this story. Something in the combination has drawn me in. The three very different women who bring this story to life have their own identities, their own magic. I knew of the murder of Emmett Till, but in this story he is much more than a symbol of the civil rights movement. This is the kind of novel which weaves its own magic, has its own soul.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
The township of Money, Mississippi is the narrator of this story which focusses on the Hilson and Bryant families during the 20th century. While two significant and dreadful events - the destructive Mississippi flood of 1927 and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 - are part of this story, it’s the people who dominate the story. And it works because while readers as individuals may not believe in animism or in previous existence, how can we resist the voice of the town?
‘Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.’
The novel opens early in the 20th century, in Oklahoma, where a young girl named Doll is possessed by the spirit of a dead woman named Esther. Doll’s mother puts her up for adoption after an attempt to exorcise Esther fails, and Doll (and the story) move to Money, Mississippi. Under the influence of Esther’s spirit, Doll grows up to be a manipulative woman capable of using sex and theft to achieve her objectives. There is a nicer side of Doll, but Esther’s spirit is too strong for that side to dominate for long. Doll has a daughter, Hemmingway, who comes to despise her.
After the 1927 flood, Hemmingway becomes the focal character. Her daughter, Tass, meets and falls in love with Emmett Till during the summer of 1955. Sometime after Emmett Till is murdered, Tass marries, moves away to Detroit and has her own family. Emmett’s memory, and his spirit, is never very far away from her. And Esther’s spirit? It took another direction.
As I reflect on the story while writing this review, there are so many aspects of the story that should not have worked for me, that should have prevented my being caught up and lost in this story. Something in the combination has drawn me in. The three very different women who bring this story to life have their own identities, their own magic. I knew of the murder of Emmett Till, but in this story he is much more than a symbol of the civil rights movement. This is the kind of novel which weaves its own magic, has its own soul.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
June 4, 2013
The release of a new book from Bernice has become an event. It's like eagerly waiting for the new music from your favorite artist, or the premiere of the latest Spike Lee joint. For me, this is the rarefied air she has entered. I said in a previous review, "I can't understand for the life of me, why Bernice is not perennially on best sellers list." I guess, it is incumbent on those of us who love her writing, love the way she turns a phrase and her very vibrant and imaginative storytelling, to sing her praises to everyone we meet.
In Gathering of Waters, the writing is once again extraordinary. It was quite impressive the way she incorporated the Emmitt Till murder into the story. It was both brave, delicate and necessary. You can't write a book, with Money, MS as a narrator and not deal with the most horrific event in that towns' history. She handles it deftly and respectfully. You can really feel the characters in this novel, and everything is handled in such a way, that the historical story she tells is quite believable. The connecting of past to present and how one impacts the other is on clear display here. That is an important lesson for people to learn, and Bernice is teaching it well through a piece of exceptional fiction.
I hope everyone reads this book and makes Bernice McFadden a household name. Make sure you have time set aside when you start this book, because you will not want to put it down. I rarely read books twice, but this might be that rare occasion.
In Gathering of Waters, the writing is once again extraordinary. It was quite impressive the way she incorporated the Emmitt Till murder into the story. It was both brave, delicate and necessary. You can't write a book, with Money, MS as a narrator and not deal with the most horrific event in that towns' history. She handles it deftly and respectfully. You can really feel the characters in this novel, and everything is handled in such a way, that the historical story she tells is quite believable. The connecting of past to present and how one impacts the other is on clear display here. That is an important lesson for people to learn, and Bernice is teaching it well through a piece of exceptional fiction.
I hope everyone reads this book and makes Bernice McFadden a household name. Make sure you have time set aside when you start this book, because you will not want to put it down. I rarely read books twice, but this might be that rare occasion.
January 25, 2012
I have enjoyed this author from Loving Donovan, This Bitter Earth, The Warmest December, and Sugar to her newest Gathering Of Waters.
The other reviews give you the setting and characters, plot and such, but her bringing together of words in this story from the beginning... "Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.", to the end...."Whether you have embraced this tale as truth or fantasy, I hope you will take something away from having read it. I pray that you will become more sensitive to the world around you, the seen and unseen.", draws you in, and doesn't release you until there is nothing else there.
Once I saw that this fabulous writer was coming to my area (www.pgcmls.info)I immediately requested this book. I took the afternoon, the day after receiving it, to sit with her, listen to her, and enjoy her again. I do feel she is a gifted writer, who can tell a tell and place you there in "jowl dropping" awe with each turn of a page. To me, an excellent read, a page turning short novel, and enjoyment from Ms McFadden as always!
The other reviews give you the setting and characters, plot and such, but her bringing together of words in this story from the beginning... "Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.", to the end...."Whether you have embraced this tale as truth or fantasy, I hope you will take something away from having read it. I pray that you will become more sensitive to the world around you, the seen and unseen.", draws you in, and doesn't release you until there is nothing else there.
Once I saw that this fabulous writer was coming to my area (www.pgcmls.info)I immediately requested this book. I took the afternoon, the day after receiving it, to sit with her, listen to her, and enjoy her again. I do feel she is a gifted writer, who can tell a tell and place you there in "jowl dropping" awe with each turn of a page. To me, an excellent read, a page turning short novel, and enjoyment from Ms McFadden as always!
December 9, 2012
I'm not sure what to think about this book. In the beginning I absolutely LOVED it. The first chapter and the storytelling is compelling. Also, intriguing is the idea of the spirit world and that what you do comes back to either haunt or help you ten fold. Ms. McFadden is clearly influenced by Toni Morrison and the notions of the spirit world in this book are reminiscent of those in "Beloved." However, as the book progressed I feel as though we lost our way a bit. While I realize that Money, Mississippi, is an important place in the history of African-Americans, I feel as though once the book began to tell the story of Emmitt Till, it became much more like a history lesson as opposed to a story. I'm left with questions, in the book if JW was possessed by the spirit of Esther, surely Ms. McFadden is not suggesting that it was the spirit of a black woman responsible for his death? I think Ms. McFadden had a wonderful idea with this book and parts of it are truly beautiful, however, I found the writing and the story to be a bit uneven.
July 7, 2012
Kinda blown away. Wasn't haaaaardly expecting THIS story. Well done. Well done. Wish it had been longer.
January 14, 2013
The best way to describe this book is a haunting read, thoroughly engrossing yet a bit painful at the same time.
I've seen this book described as a fictionalized story of Emmett Till (the 14-year old African American boy in 1950s Mississippi who was murdered after reportedly flirting with a white woman), but it really is a whole lot more than that. It traces the evil that lived in that town, Money, Mississippi, which according to the book, existed well before Emmett Till even arrived from Chicago.
And it's the accounts of this evil that are haunting, difficult to read but impossible to put down. In particular, the actions of Doll, the first person we meet said to be taken by the vengeful spirit, are ghastly. When her kids are young, she secretly steals their prized possession, and takes pleasure in their demonstrated sorrow. As they get older, she calculatedly withholds her love in the most painful way, especially to her daughter. All this while sleeping with a good portion of the town, crushing the heart of her husband, the town's pastor.
When we meet Emmett, the love interest of Doll's granddaughter, we know how it's going to end, but it doesn't make the reading any easier. At this point, the spirit has taken residence in the body of Roy Bryant, who takes the evil to a whole other level.
The story is told through an odd choice of narrator--the town of Money, Mississippi. Usually I find this kind of thing distracting, but it worked beautifully with this story. You almost need the town to trace its own history here, the generations of racial tensions that finally reach a tragic peak.
Despite its heavy subject matter, this was a quick read (one sitting in a few hours for me). I was a big fan of one of McFadden's other books, Sugar, and this one definitely did not disappoint.
I've seen this book described as a fictionalized story of Emmett Till (the 14-year old African American boy in 1950s Mississippi who was murdered after reportedly flirting with a white woman), but it really is a whole lot more than that. It traces the evil that lived in that town, Money, Mississippi, which according to the book, existed well before Emmett Till even arrived from Chicago.
And it's the accounts of this evil that are haunting, difficult to read but impossible to put down. In particular, the actions of Doll, the first person we meet said to be taken by the vengeful spirit, are ghastly. When her kids are young, she secretly steals their prized possession, and takes pleasure in their demonstrated sorrow. As they get older, she calculatedly withholds her love in the most painful way, especially to her daughter. All this while sleeping with a good portion of the town, crushing the heart of her husband, the town's pastor.
When we meet Emmett, the love interest of Doll's granddaughter, we know how it's going to end, but it doesn't make the reading any easier. At this point, the spirit has taken residence in the body of Roy Bryant, who takes the evil to a whole other level.
The story is told through an odd choice of narrator--the town of Money, Mississippi. Usually I find this kind of thing distracting, but it worked beautifully with this story. You almost need the town to trace its own history here, the generations of racial tensions that finally reach a tragic peak.
Despite its heavy subject matter, this was a quick read (one sitting in a few hours for me). I was a big fan of one of McFadden's other books, Sugar, and this one definitely did not disappoint.
February 15, 2014
Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Gathering of Waters begins with provocative insights into the human spirit: “…your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die”; and, the Native and African American’s concept of animism: “… the idea that souls inhabit all objects, living things, and even phenomena “, they fly from one home to the next, as each is destroyed or dies. Then, the author shares the definition of the Mississippi River: the translation comes from the Chippewa meaning "great river" or "gathering in of all the waters". From there McFadden creates the evil spirit of Esther, connecting “her” to the horrific murder of Emmett Till, and finally, Hurricane Katrina.
McFadden begins with a strong narrative, combining her spiritual premise within her character development. However, with the introduction of each new character and time period, her story-line begins to feel choppy and episodic. The reader waits for that moment when all elements will be pulled together, but it never happens. The novel ends abruptly with a brief synopsis devoted to Emmett Till and a few lines to Hurricane Katrina. That promised moment, when all comes together does not occur. The reader is left unfulfilled.
There is little doubt Bernice McFadden is a well-tuned writer. She writes with sympathy and emotion and defines her characters adroitly. She researches her work and builds an interesting plot. This novel has great potential (a novel in progress?); it simply does not feel complete.
Gathering of Waters begins with provocative insights into the human spirit: “…your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die”; and, the Native and African American’s concept of animism: “… the idea that souls inhabit all objects, living things, and even phenomena “, they fly from one home to the next, as each is destroyed or dies. Then, the author shares the definition of the Mississippi River: the translation comes from the Chippewa meaning "great river" or "gathering in of all the waters". From there McFadden creates the evil spirit of Esther, connecting “her” to the horrific murder of Emmett Till, and finally, Hurricane Katrina.
McFadden begins with a strong narrative, combining her spiritual premise within her character development. However, with the introduction of each new character and time period, her story-line begins to feel choppy and episodic. The reader waits for that moment when all elements will be pulled together, but it never happens. The novel ends abruptly with a brief synopsis devoted to Emmett Till and a few lines to Hurricane Katrina. That promised moment, when all comes together does not occur. The reader is left unfulfilled.
There is little doubt Bernice McFadden is a well-tuned writer. She writes with sympathy and emotion and defines her characters adroitly. She researches her work and builds an interesting plot. This novel has great potential (a novel in progress?); it simply does not feel complete.
April 8, 2012
I picked up Gathering of Waters after seeing a very positive review on here by my friend, Kristi. As usual, she was dead on - this book was fantastic. Narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi, this novel reminds us of the far reaching impact of hatred and racism, as well as the redemptive power of kindness and love. I don't want to give anything away, as I could not turn the pages fast enough, but I will say that this is the first book ever that left me covered, head to toe, with goosebumps as I turned the last page.
March 18, 2012
"Chapter 1 is luscious. This holds the promise of beautiful storytelling."
And this held true through the end. It was a story told across generations, through the memory of Money, Mississippi. The pacing was quick and spirited. It seemed to be a tale of many things, but mostly the timelessness of love and evil, embodied in spirit.
And this held true through the end. It was a story told across generations, through the memory of Money, Mississippi. The pacing was quick and spirited. It seemed to be a tale of many things, but mostly the timelessness of love and evil, embodied in spirit.
October 12, 2019
To make sure Emmett Till’s story never dies is what Bernice did with this one. My 5th book by her and she found a way to create a storyline leading to the connection of a heartache that took place in 1955.
This story goes further back and originates in a time where a hooker named Esther damaged others because her beauty was used against her. She was isolated because of her beauty, abused, and only used for her body. Once dead, her spirit only carried evil and hate. That evil took control of two people in Money, Mississippi . A little girl who became an adulteress and a white man who thrives off of killing (but it is 1955).
What happens after death sits within this story. The way Bernice did not just tell the events of Emmett’s life leading up to his but also gave him a chance to love and not carry hate after the color of his skin caused his brutal murder is something that sits with me still.
Bernice gives you so much of Money, Mississippi over the years. Hurricane Katrina, the death of Emmitt Till, and the Great Mississippi flood all connect within the characters of this story. A story worth reading.
This story goes further back and originates in a time where a hooker named Esther damaged others because her beauty was used against her. She was isolated because of her beauty, abused, and only used for her body. Once dead, her spirit only carried evil and hate. That evil took control of two people in Money, Mississippi . A little girl who became an adulteress and a white man who thrives off of killing (but it is 1955).
What happens after death sits within this story. The way Bernice did not just tell the events of Emmett’s life leading up to his but also gave him a chance to love and not carry hate after the color of his skin caused his brutal murder is something that sits with me still.
Bernice gives you so much of Money, Mississippi over the years. Hurricane Katrina, the death of Emmitt Till, and the Great Mississippi flood all connect within the characters of this story. A story worth reading.
February 23, 2012
Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden (Akashic Books; 250 pages; $15.95).
In her seventh novel, Gathering of Waters, author Bernice L. McFadden skillfully combines history with folklore and magical realism. She also re-imagines the 1955 brutal murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. What results is a breathtaking literary masterpiece of epic proportions.
Gathering of Waters is notable because Ms. McFadden does something in her book that is not often done. She tells her story from the point of view of the town of Money, Mississippi. Money sees all; Money knows all. Money is everywhere. "I am Money. Money Mississippi. I have been figments of imaginations, shadows and sudden movements seen out of the corner of your eye. I have been dewdrops, falling stars, silence, flowers, and snails." I cannot remember the last novel I read in which the narrator was not a person but a place. This is such a unique and fresh method of storytelling in a time when the first person plural ("we") has become increasingly popular.
Ms. McFadden turns Money into a character. Her use of personification, attributing human characteristics to non-living things, is near divine. For instance, Money feels pain and has a memory, "For a time I lived as a beating heart, another life found me swimming upstream toward a home nestled in my memory. Once I was a language that died. I have been sunlight, snowdrifts, and sweet babies' breath."
Money also is an abundance of knowledge for us and explains Ms. McFadden's title: "You know, before white men came with their smiles, Bibles, guns, and disease, this place that I am was inhabited by Native men. Choctaw Indians. It was the Choctaw who gave the state its name: Mississippi—which means many gathering of waters."
Money is particularly interested in one of the families who lives within its confines. Money tells us: "Admittedly, I am guilty of a very long and desperate fascination with a family that I followed for decades. In hindsight, I believe that I was drawn to the beautifully tragic heartbrokenness of their lives, and so for years remained with them, helplessly tethered, like a mare to a post." That family is the Hilson family: Reverend August, his wife Doll, and their children, Hemmingway and Paris.
An evil spirit inhabits the body of Doll Hilson. Her name is Esther, and she was once a prostitute who now goes from host to host. Money explains that "when objects are destroyed and bodies perish, the souls flit off in search of a new home." Esther does just that; she comes into Doll's soul at the moment of her birth. Doll's mother, Coraline, remembers: "You come into this world screaming holy murder, and didn't stop until you were a month old. Like to drive me outta my mind. It was your daddy–God rest his soul–who stopped me from throwing you down the well." Doll responds, in Esther's voice, "Maybe you the one shoulda gone down the well." Not even death stops Esther. When Doll dies, she simply finds another human to torment. This demon destroys the lives of three generations of women in the Hilson family. Esther also causes the brutal slaying of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till when she enters the body of J.W. Milam, half-brother of Roy Bryant. These two men beat the teen, who was from Chicago and vacationing in the area, to death for supposedly whistling at Bryant's wife. Please do not think Ms. McFadden is trivializing Till's murder; she is not. She is not trying to explain it away either. Ms. McFadden puts her own spin on it, which is what fiction writers must do.
Gathering of Waters also features two disasters that caused massive devastation and loss of life in Mississippi, this place where many waters converge: the 1927 flood and Hurricane Katrina. Money describes how in April of 1927 "most folk in Mississippi couldn't think of anything but rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flooding." Conditions worsen quickly. Money is overrun by the waters of the Mississippi when the levees give way: Bodies are everywhere; some float, some are caught in trees. Ms. McFadden brings this horrible natural disaster to life.
But she does not stop there. When Gathering of Waters ends in 2005, Mississippi braces for another calamity, and she is named Katrina. Money sounds angry when it talks about the storm: "In the Gulf of Mexico, she suddenly turned furious. Draped in black clouds, blowing wind, and driving rain, she charged into Louisiana like a bull and fanned her billowing dark skirts over Mississippi." Guess who Money believes Katrina is? If you guess Esther, you are correct. "They named her Katrina," Money scoffs, "but I looked into the eye of that storm and recognized her for who she really was: Esther…cackling and clapping her hands with glee."
At the end of Ms. McFadden's novel, Money warns, "As you go about your lives, keep in mind that an evil act can ruin generations…." Yet, take heart, for "gestures of love and kindness will survive and thrive forever." When Money talks, we should listen.
In her seventh novel, Gathering of Waters, author Bernice L. McFadden skillfully combines history with folklore and magical realism. She also re-imagines the 1955 brutal murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. What results is a breathtaking literary masterpiece of epic proportions.
Gathering of Waters is notable because Ms. McFadden does something in her book that is not often done. She tells her story from the point of view of the town of Money, Mississippi. Money sees all; Money knows all. Money is everywhere. "I am Money. Money Mississippi. I have been figments of imaginations, shadows and sudden movements seen out of the corner of your eye. I have been dewdrops, falling stars, silence, flowers, and snails." I cannot remember the last novel I read in which the narrator was not a person but a place. This is such a unique and fresh method of storytelling in a time when the first person plural ("we") has become increasingly popular.
Ms. McFadden turns Money into a character. Her use of personification, attributing human characteristics to non-living things, is near divine. For instance, Money feels pain and has a memory, "For a time I lived as a beating heart, another life found me swimming upstream toward a home nestled in my memory. Once I was a language that died. I have been sunlight, snowdrifts, and sweet babies' breath."
Money also is an abundance of knowledge for us and explains Ms. McFadden's title: "You know, before white men came with their smiles, Bibles, guns, and disease, this place that I am was inhabited by Native men. Choctaw Indians. It was the Choctaw who gave the state its name: Mississippi—which means many gathering of waters."
Money is particularly interested in one of the families who lives within its confines. Money tells us: "Admittedly, I am guilty of a very long and desperate fascination with a family that I followed for decades. In hindsight, I believe that I was drawn to the beautifully tragic heartbrokenness of their lives, and so for years remained with them, helplessly tethered, like a mare to a post." That family is the Hilson family: Reverend August, his wife Doll, and their children, Hemmingway and Paris.
An evil spirit inhabits the body of Doll Hilson. Her name is Esther, and she was once a prostitute who now goes from host to host. Money explains that "when objects are destroyed and bodies perish, the souls flit off in search of a new home." Esther does just that; she comes into Doll's soul at the moment of her birth. Doll's mother, Coraline, remembers: "You come into this world screaming holy murder, and didn't stop until you were a month old. Like to drive me outta my mind. It was your daddy–God rest his soul–who stopped me from throwing you down the well." Doll responds, in Esther's voice, "Maybe you the one shoulda gone down the well." Not even death stops Esther. When Doll dies, she simply finds another human to torment. This demon destroys the lives of three generations of women in the Hilson family. Esther also causes the brutal slaying of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till when she enters the body of J.W. Milam, half-brother of Roy Bryant. These two men beat the teen, who was from Chicago and vacationing in the area, to death for supposedly whistling at Bryant's wife. Please do not think Ms. McFadden is trivializing Till's murder; she is not. She is not trying to explain it away either. Ms. McFadden puts her own spin on it, which is what fiction writers must do.
Gathering of Waters also features two disasters that caused massive devastation and loss of life in Mississippi, this place where many waters converge: the 1927 flood and Hurricane Katrina. Money describes how in April of 1927 "most folk in Mississippi couldn't think of anything but rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flooding." Conditions worsen quickly. Money is overrun by the waters of the Mississippi when the levees give way: Bodies are everywhere; some float, some are caught in trees. Ms. McFadden brings this horrible natural disaster to life.
But she does not stop there. When Gathering of Waters ends in 2005, Mississippi braces for another calamity, and she is named Katrina. Money sounds angry when it talks about the storm: "In the Gulf of Mexico, she suddenly turned furious. Draped in black clouds, blowing wind, and driving rain, she charged into Louisiana like a bull and fanned her billowing dark skirts over Mississippi." Guess who Money believes Katrina is? If you guess Esther, you are correct. "They named her Katrina," Money scoffs, "but I looked into the eye of that storm and recognized her for who she really was: Esther…cackling and clapping her hands with glee."
At the end of Ms. McFadden's novel, Money warns, "As you go about your lives, keep in mind that an evil act can ruin generations…." Yet, take heart, for "gestures of love and kindness will survive and thrive forever." When Money talks, we should listen.
January 20, 2018
Just finished this amazing, moving book and am a puddle of hopeful tears. What a heartwrenching, beautiful, difficult, truth-filled story. The true events woven with fantasy was just expertly done, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Bernice L McThadden is a must-read author. Her stories leave you beautifully changed.
July 31, 2012
Money.
No, I’m not talking about the greenbacks in your wallet. I’m talking about Money, Mississippi – a small town in the northwestern tip of Mississippi.
A small town which is holds a tragic place in the annals of Civil Rights.
The small town in Mississippi where 14-year-old African boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered.
Also the small town which is the main character for nationally best-selling author Bernice McFadden’s latest book – Gathering of Waters.
The town is the narrator in this captivating novel, and details the horrific events that transpired there. Because, according to McFadden’s novel, all things – not just those breathing – possess a soul.
And you did read correctly. Though the real-life Emmett Till is a main character in Gathering of Waters, this is not a biography, it is a novel. And it can’t really even be considered an historical novel, but a haunting novel that weaves a fictional storyline that spans three generations and includes the gruesome murder of an innocent teenager from up north, who didn’t understand how cruel and nasty the racism of the Old South could be.
Emmett Till was in Money visiting his uncle, Moses Wright, in the summer of 1955. On August 28th, two white men came to his uncle’s house and accused him of whistling at one of their wives. They dragged out in the middle of the night vowing to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget.
His badly beaten body was found three days later, in the Tallahatchie River. One of his eyes was gouged out, and he had been shot in the head.
Till’s mother brought the boy’s body back to Chicago and gave him an open-casket, so that all the world could see how her son had been abused. Pictures of dead teenager laid out in the coffin were pictured in Jet Magazine, and eventually in national newspapers and magazines around the world.
The two white men were charged with Till’s death, but then acquitted by an all-white jury. They later admitted their guilt and sold their story to a national magazine, but double jeopardy had attached, and they could not be retried.
McFadden – whose other novels include the critically acclaimed and nationally best-selling novels Sugar, Camilla’s Rose, and Glorious – lives in Brooklyn, NY, but all of her 15 novels take place in the South. In 2001 she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her 2001 novel, The Warmest December, and has twice won the Zora Neale Hurston Award for Creative Contribution to Fiction.
In Gathering of Waters, McFadden weaves her novel around the story of Emmett Till, but does not begin the book in 1955, but near the turn of the century in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a whore named Esther is stabbed to death. Esther’s spirit, we find out, possesses a 5-year-old girl, who grows up to be a sordid woman who eventually moves to Money, along with her preacher husband, and their two children.
According to Money – remember the town itself is the narrator – the spirit of the dark whore, Esther, moves from body to body doing dastardly deeds which eventually leads to the lynching of Emmett Till.
But just as the novel doesn’t begin with his lynching, nor does it end with it.
You see, in the novel a 15-year-old girl from Money named Tillie falls in love with Emmett, and shares her first kiss with him. The blossoming relationship between the two teenagers is touching, but never makes it to full-bloom. Yet Tillie never forgets him, even after leaving Money, Mississippi, and it’s through her life that we continue to remember the deceased Chicago teenager.
McFadden brings her novel all the way up into the new millennium, and it ends with a twist, that most readers will not see coming.
Gathering of Waters is touching, captivating, well-written . . . if I could think of other complimentary adjectives I would also add those. Suffice it to say that this is a book that will appeal to the young and old; and those who are interested reading about history and those who primarily read fiction.
In other words, it’s a book that simply should not be missed.
No, I’m not talking about the greenbacks in your wallet. I’m talking about Money, Mississippi – a small town in the northwestern tip of Mississippi.
A small town which is holds a tragic place in the annals of Civil Rights.
The small town in Mississippi where 14-year-old African boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered.
Also the small town which is the main character for nationally best-selling author Bernice McFadden’s latest book – Gathering of Waters.
The town is the narrator in this captivating novel, and details the horrific events that transpired there. Because, according to McFadden’s novel, all things – not just those breathing – possess a soul.
And you did read correctly. Though the real-life Emmett Till is a main character in Gathering of Waters, this is not a biography, it is a novel. And it can’t really even be considered an historical novel, but a haunting novel that weaves a fictional storyline that spans three generations and includes the gruesome murder of an innocent teenager from up north, who didn’t understand how cruel and nasty the racism of the Old South could be.
Emmett Till was in Money visiting his uncle, Moses Wright, in the summer of 1955. On August 28th, two white men came to his uncle’s house and accused him of whistling at one of their wives. They dragged out in the middle of the night vowing to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget.
His badly beaten body was found three days later, in the Tallahatchie River. One of his eyes was gouged out, and he had been shot in the head.
Till’s mother brought the boy’s body back to Chicago and gave him an open-casket, so that all the world could see how her son had been abused. Pictures of dead teenager laid out in the coffin were pictured in Jet Magazine, and eventually in national newspapers and magazines around the world.
The two white men were charged with Till’s death, but then acquitted by an all-white jury. They later admitted their guilt and sold their story to a national magazine, but double jeopardy had attached, and they could not be retried.
McFadden – whose other novels include the critically acclaimed and nationally best-selling novels Sugar, Camilla’s Rose, and Glorious – lives in Brooklyn, NY, but all of her 15 novels take place in the South. In 2001 she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her 2001 novel, The Warmest December, and has twice won the Zora Neale Hurston Award for Creative Contribution to Fiction.
In Gathering of Waters, McFadden weaves her novel around the story of Emmett Till, but does not begin the book in 1955, but near the turn of the century in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a whore named Esther is stabbed to death. Esther’s spirit, we find out, possesses a 5-year-old girl, who grows up to be a sordid woman who eventually moves to Money, along with her preacher husband, and their two children.
According to Money – remember the town itself is the narrator – the spirit of the dark whore, Esther, moves from body to body doing dastardly deeds which eventually leads to the lynching of Emmett Till.
But just as the novel doesn’t begin with his lynching, nor does it end with it.
You see, in the novel a 15-year-old girl from Money named Tillie falls in love with Emmett, and shares her first kiss with him. The blossoming relationship between the two teenagers is touching, but never makes it to full-bloom. Yet Tillie never forgets him, even after leaving Money, Mississippi, and it’s through her life that we continue to remember the deceased Chicago teenager.
McFadden brings her novel all the way up into the new millennium, and it ends with a twist, that most readers will not see coming.
Gathering of Waters is touching, captivating, well-written . . . if I could think of other complimentary adjectives I would also add those. Suffice it to say that this is a book that will appeal to the young and old; and those who are interested reading about history and those who primarily read fiction.
In other words, it’s a book that simply should not be missed.
February 4, 2012
There are books that I love and there are books that I treasure. When I finished the last page of Gathering of Waters, I knew that this book would be that latter. It is one of those books that after I'm done reading, I go back and read certain passages again and again, and then later go back and reread the whole book before mailing it to my sister and ordering another one for myself. The only trouble with a book like this one is finding a way to put my love of it into words.
Gathering of Waters is the story of many people and at the same time the story of one. It is told by the narrative voice of Money, Mississippi, a place that has known great tragedy through its years and one crime so heinous that it's hard to stomach nearly 60 years later. Money tells the story of the people who've inhabited it and the spirit of one soul, so wretched, that no good could ever come from it. It is a tangling of fact and fiction, harsh reality and the fantastical, and the moment in time where they converge.
The crime that was committed in Money, Mississippi in the summer of 1955 not only took the innocent life of Emmit Till, it also stole the innocence of those who knew him. Gathering of Waters is a back-story to his story, a backdrop for the events that led up to it, and a peek into the lives of the people who came to play a role in it all. It tells of a time where a nation was stripped bare and exposed was the evil that it was built on. It is the story of love that endures all, even death.
Every now and then a book comes along and leaves me spellbound. Gathering of Waters is one of those books. There are many adjectives I could apply to describe this book; beautiful, heart wrenching, stunning, painful, sad, uplifting. Each of them apt but still somehow fall short of conveying the impact of this book. To know what a treasure Gathering of Waters is you have to read it, savor it, then pass it along to someone else to keep the spirit of Money, Mississippi alive.
Gathering of Waters is the story of many people and at the same time the story of one. It is told by the narrative voice of Money, Mississippi, a place that has known great tragedy through its years and one crime so heinous that it's hard to stomach nearly 60 years later. Money tells the story of the people who've inhabited it and the spirit of one soul, so wretched, that no good could ever come from it. It is a tangling of fact and fiction, harsh reality and the fantastical, and the moment in time where they converge.
The crime that was committed in Money, Mississippi in the summer of 1955 not only took the innocent life of Emmit Till, it also stole the innocence of those who knew him. Gathering of Waters is a back-story to his story, a backdrop for the events that led up to it, and a peek into the lives of the people who came to play a role in it all. It tells of a time where a nation was stripped bare and exposed was the evil that it was built on. It is the story of love that endures all, even death.
Every now and then a book comes along and leaves me spellbound. Gathering of Waters is one of those books. There are many adjectives I could apply to describe this book; beautiful, heart wrenching, stunning, painful, sad, uplifting. Each of them apt but still somehow fall short of conveying the impact of this book. To know what a treasure Gathering of Waters is you have to read it, savor it, then pass it along to someone else to keep the spirit of Money, Mississippi alive.
March 10, 2012
"Both the Native man and the African believed in animism, which is the idea that souls inhabit all objects, living things, and even phenomena. When objects are destroyed and bodies perish, the souls flit off in search of a new home."
When I read this quote in the early pages of Gathering of Waters, I was prepared to love the book. That did not quite happen, though I mostly enjoyed reading it. The trouble for me was an unevenness of intensity in the story, because the subject matter is intense, violent, and provocative.
The narrator is a place: Money, Mississippi is a small town in the delta, first built by real estate developers in 1900 and always racially divided. Through the generations of its residents, a single soul returns over and over. She is wanton, without conscience, as well as destructive. In 1955 comes the real incident culminating in the hanging of Emmett Till. The final pages are set during Hurricane Katrina.
I felt there were too many times when the narrative slowed or flattened out into small day by day details. The writing suffered from a subdued emotional tone.
Other than that, the premise and construction are not quite like anything else I've read. Both races have admirable and despicable characters. I could feel the Toni Morrison influence and tribute throughout. Because of these qualities and because she has a moral vision I found intriguing, I will read more Bernice McFadden.
April 15, 2012
Spirits Among the Living
Welcome to Money, Mississippi, a town of secrets and spirits. When people die, are their souls truly at rest? In her latest novel, McFadden weaves a tale of fantasy and history as she uses her own imagination to create a background story for the Emmitt Till tragedy.
“Gathering of Waters” begins with an introduction to Esther, the restless soul of a dead prostitute who will influence many lives in decades to follow. Esther inhabits the body of Doll, a preacher's wife who is anything but holy. Following Doll's life, we are introduced to her daughter, Hemmingway, who fortunately escapes the grasp of the soul of Esther. However, Hemmingway does give birth to a daughter she names Tass. It is through Tass that we finally meet Bobo (Emmitt Till) and are introduced to their brief love affair. Unfortunately, we all know how the story ends. Yet, McFadden manages to turn this tragedy into a romance that reaches beyond the grave.
McFadden is a masterful storyteller. Her characters leap off the pages with her rich dialogue. I truly enjoyed reading the "prequel" to the Emmitt Till story. Even though this is from her imagination, McFadden writes in such a way that the reader can easily accept it as truth. McFadden has once again given readers a story of sorrow and joy, life and death and hope for tomorrow.
I loved this novel and highly recommend it.
Reviewed by: Flashette
Welcome to Money, Mississippi, a town of secrets and spirits. When people die, are their souls truly at rest? In her latest novel, McFadden weaves a tale of fantasy and history as she uses her own imagination to create a background story for the Emmitt Till tragedy.
“Gathering of Waters” begins with an introduction to Esther, the restless soul of a dead prostitute who will influence many lives in decades to follow. Esther inhabits the body of Doll, a preacher's wife who is anything but holy. Following Doll's life, we are introduced to her daughter, Hemmingway, who fortunately escapes the grasp of the soul of Esther. However, Hemmingway does give birth to a daughter she names Tass. It is through Tass that we finally meet Bobo (Emmitt Till) and are introduced to their brief love affair. Unfortunately, we all know how the story ends. Yet, McFadden manages to turn this tragedy into a romance that reaches beyond the grave.
McFadden is a masterful storyteller. Her characters leap off the pages with her rich dialogue. I truly enjoyed reading the "prequel" to the Emmitt Till story. Even though this is from her imagination, McFadden writes in such a way that the reader can easily accept it as truth. McFadden has once again given readers a story of sorrow and joy, life and death and hope for tomorrow.
I loved this novel and highly recommend it.
Reviewed by: Flashette
December 15, 2011
I've finished my first reading, taken in huge bites. Soon I will go back to
dine on it, savoring it bit by bit.
GATHERING OF WATERS is told by the town of Money, Mississippi. (I think this is first time I've read a story told by a place.) Though it's not a large book (252 pages), this moving tale covers decades of interesting characters that make up the Hilson and Bryant families.
If Money sounds familiar to you, it's probably because of it's infamous ties to history. It was in Money that young Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, while visiting his great-uncle one summer, supposedly whistled at, or said something to, the white woman cashier in Bryant's Store. She was the wife of the owner, Roy Bryant. Mr. Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, took Emmett from his great-uncle's home and beat him to a pulp, mutilated him and tied him to a large fan and dumped him in the Tallahatchie River.
Running throughout are ties to the spirit world. Some people see them, others don't.
McFadden's work is so real I found problems deciding where the history stopped and the fiction took over. As with her other books, I was a captive from beginning to end. There's no mystery here, but there's a running love story that transcends even death, and an all-around good yarn.
dine on it, savoring it bit by bit.
GATHERING OF WATERS is told by the town of Money, Mississippi. (I think this is first time I've read a story told by a place.) Though it's not a large book (252 pages), this moving tale covers decades of interesting characters that make up the Hilson and Bryant families.
If Money sounds familiar to you, it's probably because of it's infamous ties to history. It was in Money that young Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, while visiting his great-uncle one summer, supposedly whistled at, or said something to, the white woman cashier in Bryant's Store. She was the wife of the owner, Roy Bryant. Mr. Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, took Emmett from his great-uncle's home and beat him to a pulp, mutilated him and tied him to a large fan and dumped him in the Tallahatchie River.
Running throughout are ties to the spirit world. Some people see them, others don't.
McFadden's work is so real I found problems deciding where the history stopped and the fiction took over. As with her other books, I was a captive from beginning to end. There's no mystery here, but there's a running love story that transcends even death, and an all-around good yarn.
January 17, 2012
I’ve done a review before on a book of Ms. McFadden titled Glorious. The author wowed me with this book, and has done the same with Gathering of Waters. As you can tell from the description above, the book sounds WONDERFUL! But the book is so much more! The book is raw with emotion, life, and experience. Not only do you feel for the characters, you are transformed into the characters and experience everything that they do. I have said this on Twitter in regards to this book:
Finished this book today:http://t.co/OIgaTl5P@queenazsa is an astounding heart wrenchingly wonderful master of prose!
I mean this today as much as I meant it then. I am not sure there is enough praise that I can give this book.
In regards to the publisher, Akashic Books, it is proof to the company’s worth to have Ms. McFadden as one of their authors. Since I am a book snob, and find typos in books (even by the ‘biggest’ of authors) I can honestly say that the editors at this house are worth their weight in gold.
Finished this book today:http://t.co/OIgaTl5P@queenazsa is an astounding heart wrenchingly wonderful master of prose!
I mean this today as much as I meant it then. I am not sure there is enough praise that I can give this book.
In regards to the publisher, Akashic Books, it is proof to the company’s worth to have Ms. McFadden as one of their authors. Since I am a book snob, and find typos in books (even by the ‘biggest’ of authors) I can honestly say that the editors at this house are worth their weight in gold.
August 27, 2016
I'm 24 chapters into Bernice McFadden's "Gathering of Waters," and I'm enthralled. It's a book I'd recommend to anyone that likes a good story and one I'd insist fans of good literary fiction pick up. The book blurbs make this seems like it is almost entirely about the murder of Emmett Till, the young black man who came South from Chicago to stay with family in 1955, but there's so much more to it. The way McFadden traces generations of families leading into that summer in 1955 gives the story so much more depth and punch. And she does it with the small town of Money, Mississippi as the book's narrator, which doesn't sound like it should work but does. In fact, there are a few times I've been reading and thought, "Another writer would have made that sound corny." I'm so grateful to have been introduced to McFadden's work. Can't wait to finish this one and pick up the next!
April 13, 2012
I'd rate Gathering of Waters more like 3.5 stars. I see why so many people loved this book. It was a quick and enjoyable read but as soon as I started to fall in love with the story, McFadden would add some distracting detail. While I understand that this is a work of Historical Fiction, I don't understand the direction McFadden went with the Emmett Till story. She could have stuck more closely to the facts without taking away from her story. Also, the Hurricane Katrina tie-in (and the entire ending, honestly) seemed rushed and incomplete to me. Despite my issues with the novel, I'd still recommend it.
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