The Covenant of Water
By Abraham Vergeshe
Published 2023
Read June 2023
It’s fitting that the first literature blog I’ve written in almost a year is for this book. It’s long. It’s full of medical details. It may be exasperating to some because the main characters are all so fundamentally good. But it is so well done. After nearly a year of reading lots of books but few “serious” ones this book definitely engaged me thoroughly and left me unable to start a new book for several days. Perhaps this is a strange criteria for categorization of books but a real one for me. When a book leaves me in a state of savoring and digesting and waiting for those actions to be thoroughly over before I start a new book, it’s definitely in a winner’s circle for me.
We start in 1900 when one of our protagonists is twelve years old and being married off to a man of forty. We are ready to hate him but can’t. He needs a mother for his son. He needs someone to cook and clean and make a home for him and his son as he works hard to create something from nothing on this growing piece of property on a river— a river he avoids with a passion we slowly come to understand over the next 700 pages. Only when our protagonist—now known as Big Aimichee— is sixteen and has past puberty, learned to cook and clean well, has firmly become JoJo’s mother, and has begun to appreciate her husband, does this husband invite our protagonist into his bedroom.
She first bears him a daughter, who they learn will remain a child in thoughts and actions, but a beloved one to both her family and this reader. She later bears him a son when she is older, Philopose, who doesn’t know his father who dies.
There are other characters in this sprawling book whose stories eventually connect. None of the characters are “bad” or “evil” some certainly have more flaws than others.
This reader prefers this book to the author’s earlier “Cutting for Stone” although this reader nominated that book for her book club which discussed it with vigor. The characters are rounder and most win your affection and have you cheering for them when they are facing adversity tough choices. They don’t always pick the route you would choose for them but that of course makes the book engaging and believable. Read and relish this book.
MarshaReads.com 