Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry - freed by the Emancipation Proclamation - seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, “a stunning debut” ( Oprah Daily) about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever - from “a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance” ( Kirkus) The Sweetness of Water is an extraordinary book, and just the start of an extraordinary career.' ―Elizabeth McCracken, National Book Award finalist and author of Bowlaway His work is funny and wrenching, brilliant and exact. He has a profound understanding of the human soul - and of the vast variety of human souls on the earth - and writes sentences of immense beauty and strangeness. 'Nathan Harris is, plainly, one of the most exciting new writers I've read in years. With The Sweetness of Water, Harris has, in a sense, unwritten Gone With the Wind, detonating its phony romanticism, its unearned sympathies, its wretched racism.” ―Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Bridge of Sighs The result is better than any debut novel has a right to be. He does what all novelists are supposed to do-give birth to vivid characters, people worth caring about, and then get out of their way. “What a gifted, assured writer Nathan Harris is.

The sweetness of water by nathan harris