I was in the mood for a character-driven novel, with strong women working to find out who they are, blah blah blah. Reading that Jeni McFarland’s book The House of Deep Water was reminiscent of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and explored “… trauma, love, loss, and new beginnings found in a most unlikely place: home,” I was super grateful to Penguin Group Putnam/G.P.Putnam’s Sons and NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for this honest review.

I inferred from the blurb that the book looked at the stories of three women who return to the small southern Michigan town each had left some years ago. I was prepared to look at those characters and follow their stories, but I was NOT prepared to have to prepare a flowchart-style family tree for the dizzying number of characters introduced quickly in the first few chapters. But they were intriguing, and their backstories were interesting, so I kept on.

Maybe my brain is full from coronavirus angst, or maybe it’s just that three-plus weeks of sheltering in place has rendered me incapable of following multiple storylines with alternating points of view that also jumped back and forth in time, but I was really struggling with following things. It didn’t help that one of the main characters was known by both Beth and Eliza…but I kept on.

Beth/Eliza, the biracial daughter of Ernest DeWitt, has returned to River Bend, Michigan, with her two teenaged children, to start over. Eliza used to babysit Linda, another main character, who has left her comfortable live with her husband, Nathan, in Houston, and returned to River Bend. As she drives into town, her car breaks down and she is assisted by Ernest, who quickly moves her in with him and gets her pregnant. When Eliza/Beth and her kids also move in, the house seems damn crowded. Beth quickly picks up where she left off years ago, sleeping with Steve, the town alcoholic bad boy, who is married Linda’s aunt Deborah. Steve is a drunk and a dog who was sleeping with both Deborah and Eliza back before Eliza left town for college, and apparently everyone knew but it was one of those small-town things. I’m sure I wasn’t the only reader who kept thinking, “Beth! You can do so much better!” but of course Beth’s lack of self-worth is key to the story, and its relationship to both race and childhood trauma are slowly revealed.

Deborah’s brother Jared lives with their mother Dinah on her farm, along with his kids, at least two of whom were left for him to take care of when his wife Paula walked out some years back. Now that she is ready to marry someone else, Paula comes back to town so she can divorce Jared and get on with her life. Her kids (whose heads must be spinning) are intertwined in multiple ways, and then there is the scandal that breaks when, just as the women are returning to town, the local perv is on trial for crimes against children. The trauma that resulted from those crimes that have been going on for years engulfs several of the main characters in different ways.

So we have Beth/Eliza, Paula, and Linda, all back in River Bend, a classic dying Midwestern town. The characters, both those who stayed and those who return, all seem to want everyone to think the best of them, while everyone in town is thinking the worst of everyone else. It’s quite sad. Possibly because I’ve never had children of my own, the motherhood crises and themes didn’t really resonate with me. The inherent racism that affects pretty much every character in the book is well-drawn, as are the struggles to escape being stuck in River Bend. The battle against poverty affects both those who managed to escape as well as those who couldn’t…I found it depressing and thought-provoking, as well as being a bit of a challenge to follow until I drew up my family tree/cheat sheet. I’m glad I stuck with it, and recommend it for book groups, as there is a ton of stuff to discuss. Four stars.