Trouble the Water by Nicole Seitz

This is Southern storytelling at its BEST! "Trouble the Water" is Nicole Seitz's second novel, and it is so good I was up until the wee hours trying to finish. Her writing is a visual banquet and a feast for the soul.

Honor Maddox is a woman who doesn't want to live. Duchess is a woman who doesn't know how to live. Together, they make the unlikeliest of friends and housemates, but it takes what they each have to make them both whole again.

Found in the park by the Miss Blondell, Honor is nursed back to life and then taken to see Duchess...an eccentric who is most often found in her all together...and she is FAR from all together!

Each finds something the other needs. Honor cleans and fixes things for Duchess, and Duchess in turn helps Honor find...her honor once again. But when Honor's health takes a turn for the tragic, it's up to Honor's sister, Alice, to bring the ultimate healing.

Poetic, picturesque, and poignant. Nicole has a way with words that make you want to drink them in. I don't know much about the Gullah culture, but Nicole obviously does, and while I have some concerns about "things" I see in their beliefs, but they all take a back seat and become shadows in the light of Nicole's storytelling.

Honor's fight is a gorgeous and tragic visual image of what happens to us when we bottle things up and don't lay our troubles, our sins, and our concerns at the foot of the cross. I don't know if Nicole planned it that way, but that's what it meant to me.

The good news--what Honor, Duchess and Alice all find out--is that it is NEVER too late! Take that away from this masterpiece of fiction, if nothing else, please!

When I found out what the title was based upon...wow, did the tears start flowing for me (you'll have to discover it when you open the first page for yourself--then you'll get it:-).

A gorgeous story written by a gorgeous lady, and one I'm proud to give six out of five bookmarks, with a paintbrush as a charm. Don't miss out on this one!

Happy Reading!

Deena