Overview

In this riveting fictional story, Money, Mississippi, notorious for its dark past, has undergone a profound transformation. Where once Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market bore witness to a brutal murder, now stands a gleaming Walmart, flanked by bustling fast-food restaurants and a Starbucks. The streets are alive with the vibrant diversity of young couples, where skin color is no longer a barrier to love. Jill and Alvin, their worlds apart in more ways than one, are entangled in a passionate affair that defies conventions. For Jill, it's a rebellion against her own family's history, an opportunity to defy her KKK heritage. Alvin, driven by youthful desires and a mission to challenge his grandfather's prejudices, sees Jill as a way to prove that love transcends color lines. But their love is complicated by the stark differences in their backgrounds. Alvin hails from the prosperous River Hill Estates, while Jill resides in a housing project alongside the murky tributary of the Tallahatchie River. Her future is limited to Walmart and the PTSD medication stemming from her traumatic military past. When Alvin departs for college, leaving Jill pregnant, he returns four years later with a bride-to-be, igniting a powder keg of emotions. The town's newfound harmony is put to the test, and as secrets resurface, it raises questions about whether the spirit of Emmett Till still lingers in the enigmatic waters of the Tallahatchie. 'Into the Water' is a captivating exploration of love, rebellion, and redemption against the backdrop of a town's remarkable transformation, where the past refuses to remain submerged. Excerpt: As Alvin walked along the river, he felt himself wise for a boy. In that brief summer escaping from murderous Chicago, he had been fed a healthy diet of grandfatherly advice on everything from blues to women. And it was the subject of women that had intrigued Alvin the most. He let the John Lee Hooker, BB King, Charles Johnson, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, and Son House albums gather dust while he studied the white girls of Money. He had dated white girls in Chicago an act that got him in trouble with a local street gang in his Southside neighborhood. It had taken his book smarts along with his good looks to wow those northern girls. When he got off the bus at the depot in Money and looked around at the willows blowing in the breeze, he felt oddly at ease and imagined those willows as the arms and legs of girls bending and yielding to his enchanting northern accent and street edge. He would allow them to cast their spell first of course. His grandfather had said that was the gentlemanly thing to do. He loved the spells of white girls--the eyes that changed from blue to green from amber to black at the whim of the sun or even a cloudy sky.

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Charles W. Harvey is a native Houstonian and a graduate of the University of Houston. At UofH he studied fiction under the guidance of Rosellen Brown and Chitra Divakaruni. In 1987, Charles was a 1st place prize recipient of PEN/Discovery for his short story Cheeseburger, which went on to be published in the Ontario Review. In 1989 Charles Harvey was awarded the Cultural Arts Council of Houston Grant for Writers and Artists. Also in 1989 he was a finalist in the MacDonald's Literary Achievement Awards. Charles has been published in Soulfires, Story Magazine SHADE, High Infidelity, The James White Review, and others. He is the author of the novels The Butterfly Killer, The Road to Astroworld, and Antoine's Double Trouble. He is also the author of several story and poetry collections. He also writes for the stage and screen.

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