In Dark Water

In Dark Water

In 1958, in a small town in upstate New York, the Buell family is falling apart. The sudden death of David, the only son, forever changes the bonds that connect them to one another and to the world. This is the story of Dorrie Buell, an intensely perceptive girl, trying to find her place in this charged, unpredictable landscape.

With clarity and grace, in lush, beautiful prose, Mermer Blakeslee brilliantly captures the grief that can shatter an ordinary family. As her mother sinks into depression, eleven-year-old Dorrie, full of an unusual mix of grit and delicacy, sets out on her own.

Armed with the imagined identity of a cowboy drifter, Dorrie finds kinship and refuge in the hilltop farm of the lively, eccentric Tappen family. Yet the deep currents of Dorrie's life keep pulling her back toward her mother, toward the past that binds them, toward common ground.

Luminous, profound, alive with the secret knowledge of childhood, In Dark Water is a stunning novel of one family's trial and redemption. In Dorrie, Mermer Blakeslee has created a character who will find a place in your heart forever.

Amazon.com Review

The year is 1958, the location a small town in upstate New York where a tragedy has just occurred in the life of 11-year-old Eudora (Dorrie) Buell: her beloved older brother, David, has died in a motorcycle accident, and this little girl's whole world is about to crumble. In her second novel, In Dark Water, Mermer Blakeslee introduces her appealing heroine and then proceeds to burden her with more trials than Job himself ever faced. In the wake of her brother's death, Dorrie's mother has a complete breakdown, and her father, so caught up in his own grief and his wife's problems, neglects his daughter. When the local stable where Dorrie has found what little solace she can in riding closes down, it's the last straw; hacking off her hair, Dorrie packs her bags and hits the road under the shiny new moniker of Dorrie Shane (in honor of the television cowboy she admires) only to fetch up on the doorstep of the Tappen family farm a few miles away.

Dorrie's time with the Tappens is healing but all too short. One misunderstanding leads to another, and soon the little girl is caught up in a terrifying series of events that threaten Dorrie's own fragile grip on reality. Blakeslee writes her harrowing account of familial disintegration from several different perspectives: Dorrie's, of course, as well as Mrs. Tappen's and her parents. If most of the novel is dark, the promise of eventual redemption lightens the gloom, and for readers looking for a compelling domestic drama, In Dark Water fits the bill.

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (June 23, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345417771
• ISBN-13: 978-0345417770
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds