Troubled Waters [Paperback]

'An absorbing story of a young woman's journey towards an act of redemptive protest.''Heglar's spirited debut novel layers a story of climate change activism in 2014 Mississippi with a parallel narrative of the 1950s civil rights movement . . . Heglar writes intriguingly of the long trail of injustice faced by subsequent generations of Americans. Readers of message-driven fiction will appreciate this.''Weaving together generational trauma, untold stories of the civil rights movement, and an exploration of the impacts of environmental trauma and climate change, Heglar packs a wallop in this lyrical, powerful story of Black women, family love, endurance, and the power of place.'In heartfelt, lyrical prose, celebrated author Mary Anna?se Heglar weaves an unforgettable, distinctly Southern story of the enduring power of family, Black resistance, and the rising climate crisis.

In this intimate portrait of two generations, a granddaughter and a grandmother come to terms with what it means to heal when the world is on your shoulders.

The world is burning, and Corinne will do anything to put out the flames. After her brother died aboard an oil boat on the Mississippi River in 2013, Corrine awakened to the realities of climate change and its perpetrators. Now, a year later, she finds herself trapped in a lonely cycle of mourning both her brother and the very planet she stands on. She’s convinced that in order to save her future, she has to make sure that her brother’s life meant something. But in the act of honoring her brother’s spirit, she resurrects family ghosts she knows little about—ghosts her grandmother Cora knows intimately.

Cora’s ghosts have followed her from her days as a child desegregating schools in 1950s Nashville to her new life as a mother, grandmother, and teacher in Mississippi. As a child of the Civil Rights movement, she’s done her best to keep those specters away from her granddaughter.lC'