I initially thought of placing this post on Flying High Reviews, my blog for books centering on strong female protagonists. After due consideration, I realized that Blackwater Falls protagonist Inaya Rahman could not be characterized as strong though she does have other admirable traits. So this review is appearing on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer.
Blackwater Falls is the fifth book I've read by Ausma Zehanat Khan. The first four were in the Rachel Getty/Essa Khattak series. I reviewed two of them on this blog. Those reviews can be found here and here . Blackwater Falls is the #1 book in its series. Both series by Khan are mysteries centering on law enforcement protagonists. It's important to note that the Getty/Khattak series takes place in Canada. So Blackwater Falls is Khan's first novel that is situated in the United States.
When Khan wrote her first series she lived in Canada. She has moved to Colorado, and has switched the location of the new series along with her place of residence.
Areesha Adams, a community organizer and civil rights attorney, who is a prominent character in this novel, brings up a case of an unarmed Black man killed by police.
I would like to comment that there are numerous examples of police killings of unarmed African American men from all over the United States. The only thing that might be considered new is that they are receiving more attention in the media. There is a Wikipedia article on the subject with cases going back to 1870. The first victim listed was Henry Truman shot by Officer John Whiteside on March 31, 1870 in Philadelphia. I'm calling this particular incident to my readers' attention because today is the 153rd anniversary of this tragic event.
There is a factory in Blackwater Falls that was raided by ICE. Many of the workers turned out to be undocumented and were arrested. They were replaced by Somalis who promptly unionized. This is where I stand up and cheer. I am a huge fan of organized labor and the protection of the rights of workers.
The victim in this novel, Razan, was a high school student who was tested in aerodynamics to see if she qualified for an internship at Apex Dynamics which is a fictional company. In this novel's fictional context Apex Dynamics is a sub-contractor of Lockheed Martin, a real worldwide aerospace firm. Razan was chosen for the internship which means that she was miles ahead of me in physics. I accessed a NASA article on aerodynamics because I only had a very vague idea of this field of inquiry. The science I studied was geology. I took several college courses in geology, but I doubt I'd ever have qualified for a competitive internship. I would say that Razan was probably brilliant and that her death was a tragic loss.
Lieutenant Seif ,who was the boss of protagonist Inaya Rahman, interested me because he was trying to conceal his ethnic background. Seif's family had been in the United States for five generations. So he considered himself an American. I was brought up in a family where ethnicity was very central. So I considered Seif's perspective somewhat alien.
Speaking about alien perspectives, I looked for a coded mosaic because Inaya commented that she thought the mosaic in the local church was in code. I found a mosaic by the artist Sonia King called Coded Message: Dark Secret. I don't relate to this as a work of art, but I'm willing to say that I consider it...interesting.
Finally, I learned from the acknowledgements following the end of Blackwater Falls that Ausma Zehanat Khan lost her father in the year this novel was published which was 2022. I was sorry to learn this since I am a fan of this author.
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