“Shallow Waters” is an unpretentious account, a mix of fantasy and historical fiction. It is the tale of imaginary beings, but also a story with a complex message. Yemaya is a Mer being, mermaid if you will, and she tells her story in a first person present tense narrative as she journeys through time. It begins as she hatches from a cocoon, shedding her previous form, and becoming a woman. Readers then go back to the beginning of her journey, the encounter that changed the direction of her life, meeting Obatala. Every story transitions to yet another story. Escape brings danger; danger brings opportunity, and opportunity brings change as Yemaya moves from the peril of pirates in the Caribbean to the trauma that is The South in pre – Civil War United States, and finally on to the promise of freedom in The North.
“Shallow Waters” is engaging and thought provoking. It is quick to read and compels one to read it again. I received a review copy of “Shallow Waters” from Anita Kopacz, Atria/Black Privilege Publishing, and Simon & Schuster. Yemaya’s story unfolds with both simplicity and complexity. There are lessons from history that have applications for today.

“It’s not always wise to be the largest tree. We must know how to bend and compromise, like the willow, or else we will go down with the storm.” ( )

Anita Kopacz's Shallow Waters is built around a striking premise: a young Yemaya (the Yoruba mother/sea god), unaware of her powers, falls in love with an African fisherman and, when he is captured by slavers, follows his boat across the sea to the pre-Civil War U.S., transforms herself into a woman and sets out in search of this man. The book has been compared to The Water Dancer and The Prophets, so I was looking forward to the kind of read that would build a world and let me live in the minds of its characters as they experience that world.

As several reviewers have pointed out, however, this title reads like Young Adult literature. It's episodic, and too much of the narrative relies on coincidence. I'm meaning to slam neither young adult literature nor Shallow Waters, but at 224 pages the author doesn't give herself room to flesh out the many situations, settings, and characters she creates. I'd love to see this novel developed into a trilogy, say, that would let readers linger on different stages in the journey Yemaya takes.

Bottom line, though: Kopacz wrote the book she wanted to write—not the book I might have wished she'd written. Shallow Waters provides an effective basic introduction to one part of Yoruba beliefs; introduces a number of historical characters, including Harriet Tubman and Ralph Waldo Emerson; depicts the underground railroad; and explores the way U.S. colonialism shaped the lives of those unwillingly brought from Africa and those who were living on this land before the arrival of Europeans. There's much to value here, even if some readers may leave the book wishing for more.

I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own. ( )