The first pick of 2024 for the “Today” show’s “Read With Jenna” book club is a novel by a Michigan author who lives in Kalamazoo County.
Bonnie Jo Campbell's “The Waters” was announced Thursday as the January selection for the nearly four-year-old club created by Jenna Bush Hager, co-host of NBC's “Today with Hoda & Jenna.” .
“This is an incredible novel about extraordinary women. … He is so beautiful. It’s about what we inherit,” Bush Hager told co-host Hoda Kotb on Thursday morning.
“The Waters,” which hits bookstores Tuesday, follows a formidable matriarchal figure, Hermione Zook, a healer and herbalist in rural Michigan who settles on an island in the fictional Great Massasauga Swamp.
The book's editor, W. W. Norton, described her as “as stubborn as her tonics are powerful.” She is the mother of three estranged daughters. She lives with her granddaughter, 11-year-old Dorothy (Donkey) Zook, in a wild landscape who is just as full of character as the women portrayed in the novel.
Read With Jenna has an impressive track record of helping books reach national bestseller lists. This is the first title set in rural Michigan and was chosen by Bush Hager, daughter of former President George W. Bush.
With its detailed depiction of nature and its mystical elements, The Waters paints a vivid picture of life in a rural area. The Los Angeles Times said in its review: “'The Waters' is a thought-provoking and readable exploration of eccentricity and all different kinds of love – family love, romantic love, love of knowledge, love of animals and love of yourself.” Environment, even if it is a difficult place to live.
A graduate of the University of Chicago, Campbell has long enjoyed popularity as a writer. Her 2009 short story collection American Salvage, published by Wayne State University Press, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critic's Circle Award. She is also the winner of the 2009 Eudora Welty Prize and was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.
Her 2011 novel “Once Upon a River” was a bestseller.
Campbell's own three donkeys received a nod from Bush Hager on Thursday. While Bush Hager praised “The Waters” and urged viewers to pre-order the book, he said, “This author sent me a video of her donkeys. I love her so much.”
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [email protected].