The strongest aspect of this novel involved the massacre in Tulsa in 1921. It's a powerful description of the terrible violence of this event. I had no trouble following the changing perspectives, but some readers may be confused. I think that the constant switching of viewpoints effectively conveyed the utter chaos in Tulsa at the time.
Ramspott said in his acknowledgements that his main source was the report from the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. This is a 200 page report. I downloaded it, but didn't have time to read it yet. For those who are interested, the pdf is available at https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf.
I looked at the talk section in the Wikipedia article called The Tulsa Race Riot. There was a controversy about whether it should be called a riot or a massacre. There's yet another perspective. A book that Ramspott lists in his bibliography by James S. Hirsch bears the title, Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and its Legacy. Readers of Water Darling can decide for themselves whether Ramspott is portraying it as a riot, a massacre or a race war.
Water Darling could have been two separate novels, and perhaps that is what Evan Ramspott should have done. There would have been a paranormal character-oriented book about rain callers, their training, their internal conflicts and the difficulties of rain calling as a profession. The other book would have focused on racism--particularly the deadly paroxysm of societal racism that led to the massacre in Tulsa.
It seemed to me that the attempt to connect rain calling and the horrific event that happened in Tulsa in 1921 did not benefit the book as a whole. The rain calling aspect was underdeveloped. If protagonist Imogene's career as a rain caller had been a separate book, we could have had a broader view of rain calling and its practitioners. Readers could have met potentially fascinating characters that are only mentioned in Water Darling, and discovered more about Imogene's interactions with them. The Tulsa massacre aspect as a separate novel would have been a better paced, more action oriented book.
Another problem I had with Water Darling is that Imogene went through a process of maturation during the novel that wasn't completed during the course of the narrative. So I never got the chance to say that now Imogene is a strong woman protagonist. I thought she was almost there, but I'm not convinced from the epilogue that it actually happened. The epilogue was a sketchy summary. It didn't tell me what I really wanted to know about Imogene. I was looking for some sort of scene that would illustrate her growth.
Although I was impressed with the Tulsa massacre section and Ramspott's research into the historical record about it, I have to conclude that Water Darling is a flawed novel that didn't meet all of my expectations.
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