“Yeah, that was bizarre,” Nathan Harris said, referring to the moment when he picked up his ringing phone and Oprah Winfrey was on the other end. “I made the town of Old Ox and I was the only one a part of it, if you will, alone so much with this little world.” And then, suddenly, Harris’s little world was a place Oprah had been, and wanted to talk about.
Harris, a graduate of the University of Oregon and the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, never anticipated the level of success his 2021 debut novel, The Sweetness of Water, has enjoyed. In addition to the bestseller being an Oprah’s Book Club pick, the novel was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, made Barack Obama’s 2021 summer reading list, and was met with widespread critical praise. “Yeah, it’s just been thrilling to know that so many people are connecting with these characters in this world that I made out of thin air. I think that’s the ultimate goal.”
Now, the twenty-nine-year-old can add the 2021 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence to the long list of accolades his book has garnered. Presented annually by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the honor includes a grant of $15,000 for emerging Black fiction writers. Named in honor of the late author from Pointe Coupee Parish, the award seeks to continue Gaines’s achievements of bringing rural Black stories to the forefront of the literary canon.
Set in the waning days following the end of the Civil War, The Sweetness of Water focuses its lens on one Southern community grappling with the fissures of loss in the fictional town of Old Ox, Georgia. When newly-emancipated brothers Landry and Prentiss seek refuge on a white family’s homestead, they forge an unlikely alliance with landowners George and Isabelle Walker, who are mourning the death of their only son, a Confederate soldier.
In lyrical narrative prose, Harris interprets his cast of characters with equal parts compassion and candor, writing them with complexity and tenderness. The Sweetness of Water is a sweeping story of survival and freedom, of tension and social friction, and displaced people struggling to find their place in a new and fragmented world. Dealing in issues of race and sexuality in a disjointed society and the ripple effects of intergenerational trauma, Harris’s fictional world resonates deeply in ours.
Centering the perspectives of multiple characters, Harris creates a richly imaginative, more tangible storytelling experience. Old Ox feels immediately real, its residents accessible to a wider audience. “I see my novel as not just about those characters, but about the entire community,” he said.
“I try to use my fiction as a sense of empathy, of trying to see characters on the page who perhaps aren’t like you, who don’t look like you or are from a different place. And trying to connect with them and care about them, and hopefully that enriches the readers’ lives and makes the world a better place.” ernestjgainesaward.org
The fifteenth annual Ernest Gaines Award will be presented to Nathan Harris at 6:30 pm on Thursday, January 25, 2022 at the Manship Theatre at the Shaw Center for the Arts.
