#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPRAHS BOOK CLUB PICK From the National Book Awardwinning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom.

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of herbut was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home hes ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginias proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as hes enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hirams resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and childrenthe violent and capricious separation of familiesand the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of todays most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.