A Library Journal Most Anticipated Fall Debut
“In this wide-ranging magical realist eco-noir debut, a young woman on an isolated island investigates her mother’s disappearance and the violent secrets that lurk behind it.” —The New York Times Book Review
"Swanson writes with nuance and care—clearly as someone who has devoted a part of her life to understanding the processes of healing and trauma . . . Swanson’s prose is stunning, mysterious, and intricate." —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland
"A powerful, polyphonic story of survival and healing that gives in return as much as it asks." —Dana Dunham, Chicago Review of Books
"Things We Found When the Water Went Down is an ethereal, mixed media mystery novel about what we lose when the strongest, most vulnerable among us are made to disappear." —Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"Intriguing and inventive . . . Swanson's novel explores themes of violence against women, small town prejudice, and corporate disregard in fascinating and unexpected ways that fans of stylish, experimental fiction will appreciate." —Booklist
"You’d be hard-pressed to find a more uniquely formatted book this year. Digging through strange artifacts uncovered by the protagonist, you’ll uncover small-town and familial secrets in this beautifully examined, feminist, and compelling can’t-miss book." —Audrey Kohler and Susan Post, BookWoman, Publishers Weekly
"Atmospheric . . . Though Swanson’s novel includes news stories, police interviews, and other elements of a detective story, it resists easy categorization. Swanson shifts from footnoted just-the-facts police interviews to lyrical prose poems to visual collages; the cast of characters is similarly diverse . . . An inventive and beguiling debut." —Kirkus Reviews
"Tegan Nia Swanson's debut is a multi-faceted excavation of inherited trauma in both the spiritual and physical world that asks if regrowth is possible after immolation and offers no easy answers. In shifting forms and propulsive language, she captures the impossibility of history, the fierce pride of so-called otherness, and the dream of a gentler world. Immersive, heartbreaking, and cathartic." —Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House
"With the inspiration of passion and heightened attention (which some define as prayer) to her characters and setting, Tegan Swanson has written something entirely original and utterly fearless. Things We Found When the Water Went Down is an unforgettable literary experience that is more akin to being sucked down through a tube into a slightly different reality than it is to 'reading' a book. On this journey, the traveler’s heart stills, quickens, dives, ascends, and with each page, becomes wiser. I’ve never quite read anything like it. This book is a joy and an illumination." —Rick Bass, author of The Watch, The Hermit's Story, and All the Land That Holds Us
"Is Tegan Nia Swanson a novelist, poet, collagist, puzzle-master, or sorceress? Is this book a northern noir or an eco-thriller or a mosaic colored by magical realism? These are the questions raised by a dazzlingly original talent and story. Things We Found When the Water Went Down is a cerebral, lyrical, beautiful, mysterious defiance." —Benjamin Percy, author of The Unfamiliar Garden, The Ninth Metal, and Thrill Me
2022-09-14
A young woman investigates her mother’s disappearance and lifelong traumas in this stylistically rangy novel.
Lena Bailey, the narrator of Swanson’s brash, atmospheric debut, has grown up in a region full of conflict. Beau Caelais, located in an area loosely modeled after northern Minnesota, has been ravaged by decades of mining. Hugo Mitchum, one of those miners, has a history of physical abuse and sexual assault, and he’s long detested Lena’s hippie-ish mother, Marietta Abernathy, for being a “goddamn witch.” So when Hugo turns up dead, Marietta is the lead suspect; her disappearance from police custody only intensifies that sense. But though Swanson’s novel includes news stories, police interviews, and other elements of a detective story, it resists easy categorization. Swanson shifts from footnoted just-the-facts police interviews to lyrical prose poems to visual collages; the cast of characters is similarly diverse, encompassing hardheaded miners to the occupants of a bar that’s a refuge for “femmes and boi-dykes and faeries and two-spirits and nonbinary bodies.” In time, it becomes clear that the tragedy in Beau Caelais runs deeper than Hugo’s murder and Marietta’s disappearance; a “World Below” is occupied by decades of female victims of abuse and murder. Swanson’s approach is impressionistic and heavy on allegory—the body of water key to the story is called Ruin Lake, and before her disappearance, Marietta gathered a “menagerie” of artifacts—silt, weeds, feathers, minerals, leaves, ashes, fur—intended as an offering to heal both the wounded land and its damaged ancestors. Swanson handles this in a witty, sober manner, so the effect is less New Age–y and more earthy and strange, like a Joseph Cornell shadow box.
An inventive and beguiling debut.
