In Many Waters
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In Many Waters is the gripping story of three orphans whose lives intersect on the island of Malta during our current, urgent refugee crisis. Zoe, a budding historian, comes to Malta with her younger brother Cal to learn more about their Maltese mother, as well as the mysterious circumstances surrounding their parents’ untimely deaths. The siblings’ well-mapped plans are derailed when Cal, who is a daily swimmer in the Mediterranean, discovers a girl floating in the sea, barely alive. The small, battered fishing boat on which she has journeyed from Libya to Malta capsized in a storm: Aziza is the sole survivor. Meanwhile, Zoe returns to the site of her parents’ drownings and stumbles across a trail of clues which lead to the discovery of an unknown family member, unearthing a chain of life-changing secrets. In Many Waters brilliantly mines the hearts and minds of characters in extremis, the unforgettable tale of the ways that we love and help one another and how the choices we make reverberate through generations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brodoff, who previously won a Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction for The White Space In Between, competently explores Malta's present and past in this short novel. Of a boatload of refugees who set out to escape Gadhafi's Libya, only Aziza survives, pulled from Malta's surf by Cal Braverman. Cal and his sister, Zoe, are visitors to Malta, there to uncover their shattered family's hidden past. Helping Aziza seems but a distraction from their true purpose. The Braverman siblings' parents are lost to them, but their parents' secrets are not. Methodical investigation uncovers tragedy and betrayal, but as painful as this is, it is the only path to reconciliation. Cal and Zoe's quest allows the author to explore the long and often tragic history of the Jews of Malta. Aziza's tale of Libyan woe seems related only by the luck that puts Cal in the right place at the right time to save her, but as the novel progresses, their lives become inextricably entangled. Brevity is not a strength in this case: the novel lacks space to fully develop its themes, such as community born of calamity, and its effect is more allusive than illuminating.
