Her spirit tortures three generations of the same family. She is ubiquitous, much like the voice of Money, and she lives on, albeit in other forms, throughout the novel. She seduces men, both black and white, scandalizes womenfolk, and has her way with the town and its residents. McFadden (Akashic Books)ĭoll is not only promiscuous but also a thief and a would-be killer. ’Gathering of Waters A Novel’ by Bernice L. The only reason she even attended church service was because she enjoyed the arresting effect her presence had on the congregation.” Her days were spent lounging in her slip, sipping sweet tea. “She did not cuddle, tend to runny noses, or wrap their necks with woolen scarves to protect them from the cold. “Doll didn’t make a good wife or a good mother,” McFadden writes.

As the houses go up along the Tallahatchie River, her spirit takes over a young girl named Doll and forces her into a life of sin and depravity. In the opening pages of “Gathering of Waters,” this she-devil, a dead harlot known as Esther, takes up residence in Money. But the real story, according to this narrator, begins “not with the tragedy of ’55 but long before that, with the arrival of the first problem, which came draped in crinoline and silk carrying a pink parasol in one hand and a Bible in the other.” Money, Miss., is, in real life, the place where 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered.

I suspect, though, that my name was derived from a dream deferred, because as a town, I have been impoverished for most of my existence.” I do not know for whom or what I was named. But today, however, for you and for this story, I am Money. “I have been sunlight, snowdrifts, and sweet babies’ breath. McFadden has created a voice that is ethereal, ancient and wise: The narrator of this hypnotic novel is not a person but a place: Money, Miss.

Gathering of waters bernice mcfadden