Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2019
304 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Set in 1937 in rural Tennessee, with the construction of a monumental dam serving as background--a cinematically biblical effort to harness elemental forces and bring power to the people--Watershed delivers a gripping story of characters whose ambitions and yearnings threaten to overflow the banks of their time and place.
Nathan, an engineer hiding from his past, and Claire, a small-town housewife, struggle to find their footing in the newly-electrified, job-hungry, post-Depression South. As Nathan wrestles with the burdens of a secret guilt and tangled love, Claire struggles to balance motherhood and a newfound freedom that awakens ambitions and a sexuality she hadn't known she possessed.
The arrival of electricity in the rural community--where violence, prostitution, and dog-fighting are commonplace--thrusts together the federal and local worlds, in an evocative feat of storytelling in the vein of Kent Haruf's Plainsong, and Ron Rash's Serena.
"Barr sheds light on a unique episode in American history while illuminating the stories of two sympathetic characters." - Kirkus Reviews
"Barr displays impressive emotional depth in the depictions of Claire's growing self-confidence and Nathan's worrying. Readers looking for vivid historicals full of emotional turmoil in the vein of Wallace Stegner will enjoy this impressive novel." - Publishers Weekly
"Mark Barr's vivid and heartfelt Watershed is the most engrossing and assured debut I've read in a long, long time. The building of the hydroelectric dam in 1937 Tennessee isn't the backdrop in this riveting story―it drives everything. A hydroelectric dam engineer running from his past. A Tennessee housewife running toward a new life. You watch a countryside, a people, transformed. The dam truly brings so much more than electricity. Watershed will leave you charged and enlightened. Mark Barr is a powerhouse." - Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek
"Written with uncommon humanity and grace, Watershed is a powerful reminder of how necessary those qualities are in our own time. Mark Barr has an almost supernatural ability to make the past―both the physical and emotional realities of daily life―intimate and real. Watershed is like one of the great New Deal murals brought to passionate, striving life." - Kent Wascom, author of The New Inheritors
This information about Watershed was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mark Barr has been awarded fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo, and holds an M.F.A. from Texas State University. He lives with his wife and sons in Arkansas, where he develops software and bakes bread.
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