Bonnie Jo Campbell's vivid novel 'The Waters' plunges into the swamp between women and men

Early on, Bonnie Jo Campbell's new novel "The Waters" describes a past time when rural men and women worked together in common purpose and reasonable harmony.

But that was long ago.

At the outset of Campbell's involving novel, the most powerful woman in Whiteheart, Michigan, the folk healer Hermine (Herself) Zook, lives on an island surrounded by swampy muck; men are forbidden to step there. That doesn't stop them from occasionally taking potshots at her house or anything moving on her island.

The local men, who she dismisses as brutes, fear her. But their wives and girlfriends depend on her herbal medicines. Some of the guys do, too — especially ones with "thinblood," a clotting disorder that makes their wounds perilous.

Campbell, who lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, is one of American fiction's leading voices about rural life: the struggle to make a living, the beauty of the wild environment, the thorny and sometimes violent relationships between men and women, and the economic and industrial pressures that threaten everything. Her book "American Salvage" was a National Book Award finalist in 2009; her novel "Once Upon a River" (2011), about a teenage sharpshooting heroine, won reviewer praise likening it to Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Campbell lived for a year in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood while taking classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was on her way to a doctorate in math at Western Michigan University before committing herself to literature.

Filled with vivid descriptions of the diverse flora of this wetlands, "The Waters" is a realistic novel with a strong thread of fairy tale running through it. Herself raised three girls: Primrose, Maryrose (now known as Molly) and Rose Thorn. Each has some kind of saving or healing power. Rose Thorn's presence is so intoxicating it tends to elevate the behavior of most men around her.

Now Herself is raising Rose Thorn's daughter Dorothy, nicknamed Donkey, a bright but unschooled tween with a passion for math, who is going to learn many surprising things about her family in these pages, including the acts of violence and transgression that led to some of their births.

The fauna of M'sauga Island, where Donkey lives, include the eastern massasauga rattlesnake, whose venom and flesh are ingredients for some of Herself's concoctions. In one gripping scene, Donkey tries to retrieve a rattler she foolishly let escape as it slithers through the bedroom of her sleeping grandmother.

"The Waters" builds toward an incredible climactic episode that addresses the great divide running through this imperiled community.

If you go

Bonnie Jo Campbell will talk about "The Waters" at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 12 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave. She'll be in conversation with Journal Sentinel book editor Jim Higgins. Register for this free event at bonniejocampbellmke.eventbrite.com.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bonnie Jo Campbell's 'The Waters' a vivid story about rural life