Darkness Under the Water

I found "Darkness Under the Water" to be a very good 'read'. I live in the area, my husband has a Native American heritage and his uncle worked on building the dam. I feel the basic facts are there and Molly's story kept me coming back to read the book over and over. I have recommended it to several friends who have younger adults in their families, and have also mentioned it to those who don't. L.G. Allen; Barnet, VT

Beth Kanell's The Darkness Under the Water is the coming of age story of Molly Ballou, an Abenaki teenager living in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont in the 1920's, just as the dams were being put in to provide hydroelectric power. I was motivated to read this book because I know and admire Beth as a writer, I have worked in St. Johnsbury for the past 25 summers and know the Northeast Kingdom, and because I knew little about the Vermont Eugenics Project. What made this book so excellent was that it is not a polemic or issue book, despite the historical background. Instead, Molly's first person account is a loving, innocent, and inspiring account of what life in the 1920's meant to a young girl. Her challenges were both universal (young love, hard work, accepting authority) and situational (being Abenaki in Vermont, giving up a home to the dam's arrrival). What Beth Kanell is able to do as a writer is to weave those situational challenges into the universal narrative so that novel as a whole develops rich symbolism and becomes uplifting and cathartic for the reader. The Darkness Under the Water is a very successful novel, and I will be recommending it to my students at Waring School in Beverly, MA.

I enjoyed this first novel, and did not get a sense of stereotyping. At the time of this story, 1930, through the 1950s, so many people who were seen as part of a minority in America, wanted just to assimilate into the mainstream culture. They did not always pass all on the stories and traditions of their cultures, but kept it limited to a few things. This was the time of the 'melting pot' theory, when Americans were supposed to find more in common with each other than to find ways to celebrate their differences. It was scary to be different - a family could be sterilized, ostracized, driven out of their home... Parents may have observed traditions themselves but not taught them fully to their children, being more willing to see their children fitting in, in order to have the trade off of education, career, or simply see an easier path for their children. It has been my experience that not all Native Americans celebrate that history or want it known, not all Jews who left Nazi Germany stayed Jewish when they came here, and not all Eastern Europeans kept the names that identified them as being from their home countries. Now, back to the book as it is - teens, and some older folks, will learn about the bewildering and horrifying time of eugenics, the justification for so much evil. As in these times, when we wonder how Americans could ever justify torture, the reader of this tale will be drawn to wonder how eugenics was ever allowed to come into popularity, when it is considered in light of the U.S. Constitution. Eugenics carved it's own river of tears, that damaged families for generations - even now. Most will relate to the main characters, and the difficulties they face, and even understand the way that childhood memories mix with imagination and loneliness to invite a young woman to cling to a dream.

If you tell your youngsters you'd like them to read this book, they probably won't. So don't. Just buy it and leave it around to pick up for themselves. The first line will grab them. They're going to like the book because it's an intriguing story of 1920's Vermont. They're going to like it because it deals with a shocking and shameful period in American history. And they're going to like it because it deals with adult themes and never talks down to them. You are going to like it because it passes along some powerful moral lessons. From the intriguing first line to the satisfying ending, Kanell has written a winner.