Sweet Water is a novel braided like a blues song—call and response, verse and refrain. Rooted in the Southern soul of Houston’s Third Ward, it lives in the hush of a 1980s prison letter and the echoes of music reaching back across decades from mother to daughter.

With a voice both intimate and urgent, it asks what we inherit when silence is the only language we’re given: grief, memory, longing, and the unshakable weight of being misunderstood.

Lyrical and haunting, Sweet Water is a story about the ache of legacy, the truths women carry in their bodies, and the songs we sing to survive. It’s a novel that wants to be listened to as much as read.

The song begins.