The Watersmith
When hard-drinking handyman Jack Calloway discovers an old moonshine still behind the Smoky Mountain cabin he plans to flip, his teenage son dares him to repair it. Jack accepts—until his wife, Jolene, tries to sabotage the first batch and is horribly burned in the process. Wracked with guilt, Jack sends their son away and moves Jolene into the cabin to recover while he tries to sober up. Doctors diagnose Jolene with a rare post-traumatic dementia that responds only to scent, smell being the strongest trigger of memory. Desperate to help, Jack begins distilling essential oils from her favorite flowers, searching for the one that might bring her back. When a fleeting moment of clarity during a visit from their son slips away, Jack grows frantic, willing to distill anything in his grasp to reach her. A haunting, tender tale of love, regret, and the volatile bonds between parents and children, The Watersmith is a story of oil and water, memory and mercy—and how far one man will go to bring his family home.
Bio
Yance Wyatt is a neurodivergent author from Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University before earning an MFA in fiction from the University of Southern California, where he now teaches in the undergraduate Writing Program. His stories have appeared in dozens of nationally circulated literary journals and received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. He lives with his wife and son in Pasadena, California. The Watersmith is his first novel.
Praise for this book
"The Watersmith is a surprising novel about an underdog’s self-reinvention and the ways in which the dead live on.
Foreword Reviews
An unflinching and highly engaging look at family and legacy and ways we cope with great pain; Wyatt’s lively prose and vivid characters know how to pull a reader in.
Aimee Bender New York Times bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
