Bonnie Jo Campbell’s The Waters is a modern-day fairy tale set on an island inhabited only by women: the small Zook family whose matriarch, Hermine “Herself” Zook, is an herbalist and a natural healer. When Hermine’s youngest daughter bears an unplanned child, she brings the child to Hermine to raise. The young girl, Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, grows to protect the island and care for her grandmother, maintaining the bond between the Zook women in the process. The novel explores the power of women, the divisions between men and women, and the secrets that keep them apart and bring them together.

Published in 2024, The Waters is written in the vein of rural noir—a genre for which Campbell is highly regarded. As a well-known writer of novels and short stories, Campbell grew up on a Michigan farm, and she often sets her writing in similar rural settings. Her three novels and three short story collections are highly acclaimed. Women and Other Animals won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction, while American Salvage was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Campbell has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Eudora Welty Prize. A film version of the novel Once Upon a River was released in 2020.

This guide refers to the 2024 first edition by W. W. Norton & Co.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of gun violence, rape, and incest.

Plot Summary

The novel is set in an unincorporated area of Whiteheart, Michigan, which features a swampy region known as “The Waters.” Herbalist and healer Hermine “Herself” Zook lives in Rose Cottage, which is located an island amid The Waters. She provides natural healing remedies that she makes from native plants, roots, and other natural ingredients. She is the mother of three daughters—Primrose, Maryrose (called Molly) and Rose Thorn. Both Prim and Rose Thorn were foundlings whom Hermine adopted. Hermine was once married to a man named Wild Will, but she forced him to leave the island when he and his stepdaughter, Prim, began a sexual relationship.

The plot is triggered when Rose Thorn, who has been living in California with Prim, who is now an attorney, returns to Whiteheart. Rose Thorn’s sweetheart, Titus Clay Junior, proposed marriage before she left. On the night before Rose Thorn left town, she was raped by Titus Clay Senior, but this is unknown to everyone except a man named Whitby, who witnessed the attack. Now, Rose Thorn returns to Whiteheart carrying the newborn conceived from the rape; the infant girl is mere hours old. Rose Thorn brings the child to Hermine, knowing that Hermine knows how to raise girls. When the baby, who Rose Thorn names Dorothy, will drink only donkey milk, she receives her lifelong nickname: Donkey.

Donkey grows up on the island, loving animals and refusing to eat meat. She does not attend school but devours the math books that Prim sends to her. She awaits each spring eagerly when Rose Thorn returns to the island. When Donkey is 11, Hermine captures a Massasauga snake, whose deadly venom she uses in her medicines. When Donkey protests killing it, Hermine leaves the snake trapped in a bucket and forbids Donkey to go near it. The next morning, while Hermine is sleeping, Donkey attempts to allow the snake some air, but the snake escapes. Hermine continues to sleep. Knowing that Hermine insists that sleep is medicine, Donkey presumes that Hermine should not be woken. On the second day, however, when Donkey prepares to rouse Hermine, she discovers the snake hiding under Hermine’s bed. She attempts to capture it and attacks it with a sharp pencil. She is certain that the snake bites her, but she later discovers that she punctured herself with the pencil during the scuffle. When Donkey discovers that Hermine’s right hand is swollen, she is fearful that the Massasauga has bitten her.

In truth, Hermine has been shot in the hand by a man in camouflage who has been watching the island. Later, it is revealed that the man—Standish—injured Hermine in retaliation for her decision to provide his teenage daughter with medicine that would allow her to abort her pregnancy. Because Hermine’s hand is infected, it must be amputated at the nearby hospital. Hermine heals physically, but when she returns to Rose Cottage, she is listless and refuses to speak or to make medicine. She insists that it is Donkey’s turn to learn the art of healing.

A few weeks later, Rose Thorn returns, and her spirit lightens the entire island. She reveals a secret to Donkey; she has a cancerous tumor in her breast. She promises that she will seek medical treatment when she is ready. She refuses to marry Titus, though she admits that she still loves him. As spring turns to summer, the two renew their relationship, and a tradition begins of Saturday night gatherings at Boneset Table: the area just across the bridge from the island. Donkey begins to look forward to the gatherings, which become a weekly party involving music, drinking, and laughing. However, she feels guilty for leaving Hermine behind with only Donkey’s dog, Ozma, for company. On one occasion, several children attempt to break into Boneset House, the now-abandoned home of Wild Will. (He lived there after Hermine banished him from the island.) Later, Dorothy enters the house alone and finds a male ghost there, to whom she reveals the secret of Rose Thorn’s cancer. She also begins making Hermine’s medicines and leaving them for those who request them, never revealing that it is she, not Hermine, who is now doing the healing. The Massasauga snake, which now bears the mark of Donkey’s pencil, has taken up residence in the pantry where Hermine keeps her medicines. Hermine still refuses to make any medicine and rarely speaks. She also begins to gather deadly poisonous plants, which confounds Donkey.

During one Saturday gathering in late summer, Donkey attempts to bring some water to a caged pit bull at the party. He springs free and dashes across the bridge, attacking Ozma. Ozma ultimately dies, and Donkey refuses to forgive herself for her mistake. When fall arrives, Donkey convinces Rose Thorn to stay through the winter instead of returning to California. Rose Thorn agrees on the condition that Prim also come to the island. Prim does so, and when Donkey eavesdrops on the sisters’ conversation, she learns that Prim is not actually Rose Thorn’s sister, but her mother. One night at dinner, Donkey blurts out the secret of Rose Thorn’s cancer to the rest of the family and Molly. The Zook women argue, determined to force Rose Thorn to receive medical treatment. Finally, Rose Thorn agrees.

Prim returns to California the next day. Later, Hermine and Donkey discover that Rose Thorn is missing. All of Whiteheart searches for her, but she seems to have disappeared completely. Prim confirms that Rose Thorn is not with her in California. Unbeknownst to anyone, Rose Thorn has been hiding in a cave called the Fox Den. There, she discovers that Wild Will, her father, is alive and has been living on the island. He was the “ghost” to whom Donkey spoke in Boneset House. Now, he provides Rose Thorn with food, and she grows stronger, then discovers that she is pregnant with Titus Junior’s baby. She spends the winter in hiding, considering what to do. She decides to request Hermine’s abortion treatment just in case she decides that she does not wish to keep the baby. Donkey is the one who receives this request. Instead of preparing the requested medicine, Donkey leaves Rose Thorn with a medicine that Donkey believes will make the baby a boy.

One day, the men of Whiteheart are conversing at Boneset Table when a very pregnant Rose Thorn appears. Her water breaks, and when she refuses to go to the local hospital, the men carry her across the muck of the swamp to the island. Unable to rouse Hermine or Donkey with their shouts and knocking, the six men deliver Rose Thorn’s baby. Donkey appears, and although she is initially angry to learn that the baby is not a boy, she then quickly becomes protective of her new sister. One of the men, Standish, admits to Rose Thorn and Donkey that it was he who shot Hermine. Titus is summoned, and although he has since married another woman who has birthed twin sons, he is overjoyed that Rose Thorn has birthed his child. Molly and Titus prepare to help Rose Thorn and the baby, whom Donkey has named Moon Rose, across the bridge to be taken to the hospital. As they walk, the Massasauga snake appears, and Donkey attacks it to prevent it from biting Titus or Rose Moon. Her arm swells, and she too agrees to be taken to the hospital.

At the hospital, Donkey receives antivenom and heals. Meanwhile, Rose Thorn is convinced to undergo surgery to remove the tumor. While they are both hospitalized, Hermine is found floating in the muck and is brought to the hospital as well. It is discovered that she suffered a heart attack, and her daughters consent to an angioplasty. Donkey sits by Hermine’s side, promising to bring her back to the island.

The epilogue reveals that two years later, all of the Zook women are alive and living in Boneset House. Wild Will has made his existence known but continues to live in the Fox Den. Titus learns of his father’s rape of Rose Thorn and regrets that he was not a better father to Donkey.