Blackwater: The Complete Saga

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Mary-Love shook her head. To Bray she said, Bray, you go on down to Miz Driver’s house and get you something to eat. I’ll tell Miss Elinor you did what you could. I believe this book is now my favorite book. Originally written as a series, I read the edition with all the smaller books combined into one. I'd heard it was magnificent and didn't want to have to be continuously buying each new one. Michael McDowell created an epic story of multiple generations in a small Alabama town. There is an element of underlying creatures that bump in the night but it is so small that it really just blends in to the beautiful whole. This is the only book I've read by McDowell and I plan to read the rest of what he has left for us. McDowell wrote the screenplays for Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas if that gives you any idea of his brilliance. I can't really put into words what is so amazing about this book but it was fabulous enough that I had to take extended breaks away from it because I was so distressed to see it end and to lose these characters. Such a sadness to know that McDowell (lost to AIDS-related illness in 1999) is not around writing any longer. You won't regret reading this book. Elinor loves her family, she does very well by them, and you really want to like her, except that the some of the acts she commits are less justifiable than others. Going into detail would be spoilery, but let's just say that while some of her victims deserve it, others very much do not... and the consequences of those acts will haunt her family (literally) for generations, until Elinor herself is reclaimed by the waters of the Perdido. Oh! Elinor said in a light, smiling voice, after going through a flood there’s just no other way to get clean—I know it for a fact, Miz Driver!

Men never know what questions to ask, replied Manda. Won’t learn anything asking Oscar about it. Isn’t that right, Mary-Love? Don D'Ammassa, writing in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, noted that McDowell's ability to maintain a sense of mundane normalcy against supernatural activity provides the novel with "a fine balance between reality and unreality," and he called Cold Moon Over Babylon "one of the best ghost stories ever written at novel length." So, the four stars here is indicative of the strength of story idea, dialogue, and creepy parts that will take a while to forget.

She stared. Though the water was clear and only deep enough to cover the body, it had worked a kind of visual transformation: Miss Elinor’s skin seen through that rapidly running water seemed leathery, greenish, tough—and Miss Elinor’s skin, Miz Driver had noted, was of a pellucid whiteness. Moreover, even as the preacher stared, a distorting transformation seemed to come over the features of the other woman’s submerged face. While before it had been handsome and narrow and fine-featured, now it seemed wide and flat and coarse. The mouth stretched to such an extent that the lips seemed to disappear altogether. The eyes beneath their closed lids grew into large, circular domes. The lids themselves became almost transparent, and the dark slit was set directly across the bulging eyeball like a pen-drawn Equator on a child’s globe. McDowell was born in 1950 in Enterprise, Alabama, [3] and graduated from T.R. Miller High in Brewton, Alabama. [ citation needed] He received a B.A. and an M.A. from Harvard College, and a Ph.D in English from Brandeis University in 1978, based on a dissertation entitled "American Attitudes Toward Death, 1825–1865". [3] McDowell specialized in collecting death memorabilia. His extensive and diverse collection, which reportedly filled over seventy-six boxes, included items such as death pins, photographs and plaques from infant caskets. After his death, the collection was acquired by Chicago's Northwestern University, where it went on display in 2013. [5] You must have lost everything, said Mary-Love, staring at Elinor’s hair. Floodwater takes everything. I’m surprised you got away with your life. So get your feet wet ”in the churning water dyed the color of the clay beneath---dyed red, Perdido red” and swelter a while with the people of Alabama as they clean up their water swollen hymnals, bump the alligators off their front porch, and try to restore their town to dryland. Rest assured, I’ll be reading the rest.

When Oscar Caskey finds the mysterious Elinor Dammert on the second floor of a hotel during a great flood, he brings her home and falls in love with her. But Elinor isn't what she seems and Mary-Love, Oscar's mother and matriarch of the Caskey clan, doesn't want Oscar marrying her... I’m all right, said Annie Bell Driver weakly. But, law, you scared me! What were you doing down in that water, girl?

Lettered Edition

And finally, the mysterious saga of the Caskey family ends the only way it can—in terrible judgment and fury delivered under the cover of a relentless, earth-shattering Rain.

No sunrise service this year, said Annie Bell Driver. There’s too much trouble in the town. If people can sleep knowing their houses and their chattels are underwater, I say let ’em sleep. I hope that I've convinced you to give this audio a try by giving it my HIGHEST recommendation. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you do give it a go.Bray, not waiting for an explanation for Oscar’s evident fright—and wanting none—immediately began to paddle off away from the hotel. It’s part family history, part horror, though, apart from a few key moments the horror is very low key. This was ... epic. There are a few family sagas out there in book format and I'm usually not all too interested in them. This one, however, promised to be a horror story besides and it was about a little town in Alabama surrounded by swamp and mystery (perfect theme to read about in summer). Let me say it right at the beginning: this is NOT a horror story. Not really. Did that mar my enjoyment? Not one bit!