Dark Water [Hardcover]

I picked up Laura McNeal's Dark Water because of the setting: Fallbrook, California.

Fallbrook was one of those magical places of my childhood. A place where my memories are faded yet still triggers feelings of happiness.

As such, I got the book and I'm pleased that I did so.

Pearl DeWitt is a 15 year old whose father has left her and her mother. Both of them are reeling in different ways. They've gone to live on her mother's brother's avocado ranch. It is clear that Pearl admires her Uncle Hoyt. He employs migrant workers to pick the avocado trees. From Pearl's description of him, the reader knows that her Uncle Hoyt is a good man.

Now 15 is a transition age and Pearl is right in the middle of that transition. Her best friend has become some guy's girlfriend while she's still being ignored by most boys. She has a normal relationship with her mother but given how her father exited their lives, it is under stress.

Into her life comes a boy who is different from her in ways that makes her push the boundaries that surround her.

Amiel is a migrant worker. He's not a big talker but he has a way about him. Enough that Hoyt picks him up to work.

Pearl becomes intrigued by him and eventually, they form a friendship.

It isn't hard to see where this is going. He's 17, she's 15. Both are in need of a friend and perhaps a little more.

In this day and age, one would think that a relationship between Pearl and Amiel would be a 'Romeo & Juliet' scenario but McNeal reminds the reader of why it is.

In fact, McNeal does so many things right with Pearl, her mother, Uncle Hoyt, Amiel and even the secondary characters of Robby, Agnes and Mary Beth. Even Pearl's father is given a balanced portrayal in that he's a selfish man but he's not an unrecognizable one. We've all known a person like Mr DeWitt.

Each character is given a care so that as the reader heads toward the climax of the novel, the impact hits as if the reader were part of the affected community.

Unlike Romeo and Juliet, the inevitable obstacle that will challenge them is not their families but a force of nature. And as we all know, nature can kick our butt any time she feels like it.

What happens in the aftermath is portrayed so simply yet so evocatively that it is as haunting to me as the ending of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona.

Before anyone think that gives away the ending, it doesn't. Dark Water in many ways reminds me of the classic Ramona in its setting and struggle of young love, but make no mistake, Dark Water is its own story, done without extra fluff or melodrama. McNeal's prose is linear and clean with no extra padding.

An excellent novel. The kind of Young Adult novel that reminds me why I still read YA even though I'm long done with my YA years.

As the back cover rightfully notes, it is "a beautiful and haunting novel full of peril, desperation and love."

And I highly recommend it.

I just don't get it, why is it necessary to sell every YA book as some romance story, regardless of its actual content?

Just take a look at "Dark Water's" publisher provided description: "Fifteen-year-old Pearl DeWitt and her mother live in Fallbrook, California... where her uncle owns a grove of 900 avocado trees. Uncle Hoyt hires migrant workers regularly, but Pearl doesn't pay much attention to them . . . until Amiel. From the moment she sees him, Pearl is drawn to this boy who keeps to himself, fears being caught by la migra, and is mysteriously unable to talk. And after coming across Amiel's makeshift hut near Agua Prieta Creek, Pearl falls into a precarious friendship-and a forbidden romance."

Seriously, doesn't it sound like another "Perfect Chemistry" white girl/brown boy, wrong-side-of-the-track type of story which "Dark Water" absolutely is not?

Instead, this is a beautifully written, quality literary YA fiction about one girl's confusing summer when she has to deal with many difficult things - her father's infidelity, her mother's unraveling and her cousin's obsessive revenge plans. Yes, there is Amiel, but is it romance between them or a misguided infatuation that ends up costing Pearl way too much?

A combination of flawless writing, descriptive and atmospheric without being overwrought and over-ornamented by flowery adjectives and laughable similes, complex relationships and realistic characters, is what makes this novel worthy of its National Book Award acclaim, and definitely not the "forbidden romance" aspect of it.

If you, like me, are a fan of Sara Zarr's quiet, introspective novels rather than Simone Elkeles's get-in-her-pants-on-a-dare/sex-in-the-garage romances, "Dark Water" is a book for you.

I have to admit, I have such a loathing for mimes that I almost couldn't continue reading the story of a romance between Pearl, a white California girl, and Amiel, the migrant boy who relies on pantomime to communicate. But I set aside my early trauma at the hands of Shields and Yarnell and went on to read what turned out to be a very endearing, sad story.

Relationships are beautifully etched in this book--the difference between the kind of family intimacy based on years, shared blood and common humor, and the romantic intimacy that springs up out of nowhere and consumes our lives. I thought the portrait of her parents' divorce was perfectly done, how pulled she was, and how angry, even while it's clear that each side indeed had a point. But I felt the denoument was unnecessarily harsh, which I've noted happens quite a bit in YA books. The writers really go for the biggest, most melodramatically improbable event for the finish. Still, there is hope in here.

I especially liked the sly, dark humor in this book. Of particular note to young readers might be the examination of how precarious the lives of migrant workers are; their vulnerability to any kind of legal, medical or physical catastrophe.

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