![]() ![]() The white man drowns, and the Black man emerges, though he doesn’t know how, except that strange visions seem to have steered him to safety. One night, a drunken Maynard drives his carriage into the river. It’s excellent advice but impossible to follow. The other slaves, though proud of his gifts and accomplishments, which include a prodigious memory and eloquent storytelling, warn him to keep his head on straight. As Hiram’s father relies on him more and more, the young slave fantasizes that he’ll be allowed one day to run the plantation, as if he were white. Hiram become servant to his half-brother, Maynard, and receives some education from a tutor. That presentiment grows even stronger when Howell Walker, their master and tobacco planter, owns Hiram as his son - sort of. ![]() Brought up by Thena, a hard woman who has suffered similar losses and who wastes no words in expressing feelings, Hiram thinks he’s lucky but isn’t sure. ![]() Hiram Walker, born a slave in Virginia in some indeterminate year, barely remembers his mother, torn from him and sold west when he was little. Review: The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates ![]()
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