Dark Water

By Laura McNeal

A National Book Award Finalist
A Kirkus Reviews Best Books for Teens

Fifteen-year-old Pearl DeWitt lives in Fallbrook, California, where it's sunny 340 days of the year, and where her uncle owns a grove of 900 avocado trees. Uncle Hoyt hires migrant workers regularly, but Pearl doesn't pay much attention to them...until Amiel. From the moment she sees him, Pearl is drawn to this boy who keeps to himself, fears being caught by la migra, and is mysteriously unable to talk.

Then the wildfires strike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9780375897207

Laura McNeal

Laura Rhoton McNeal holds an MA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and is the author, with her husband, Tom, of four critically acclaimed young adult novels, including Crooked (winner of the California Book Award in Juvenile Literature) and Zipped (winner of the Pen Center USA Literary Award in Children’s and Young Adult Literature). Laura’s solo debut novel, Dark Water, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives with her family in Coronado, California.

Reviews for Dark Water

[farnsworthk_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a National Book Award finalist and I really don't get it. Perhaps it's because it's about a white girl and an illegal Mexican immigrant's "forbidden" love affair? I mostly found it boring and I didn't really like the characters. It just fell flat.

[lillibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Pearl and her mother live in Fallbrook, CA on her uncle's avocado ranch where she falls in love with an illegal migrant worker and is trapped with him when wildfires approach.

[salsabrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Pearl falls for her uncle's migrant worker, Amiel, a young man with a mysterious past. But her longing for Amiel leads to a tragic consequence as she hints throughout the book. Even with these hints, the turn of events still comes as a shock. Pearl's story is passionate and heartbreaking but at book's end you wonder if she isn't hanging on too tight to an impossible dream. And you have to love lines like "I was Braille and his eyes were fingers" and "I adjusted to the situation the way I suppose people adjust to being on a hijacked plane."

[shouldireadit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pearl finds herself drawn into the world of a homeless migrant worker, and begins to lie and scheme up ways for them to secretly meet - despite knowing that no one would understand her feelings for a Mexican who is from a different social class, especially her mother. It was pretty good. A little unrealistic at times, but a good storyline.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story and beautiful prose but the pace was a bit too sluggish for me.

[4sarad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought the premise of the book sounded pretty good, but I didn't enjoy it much in the end. I got annoyed with the CONSTANT foreshadowing and by the fact that I couldn't clearly picture any of the characters. In the end the story was nothing but two kids who kissed sometimes who then got stuck in a California wildfire. Some died, some lived. The end. I felt no emotional involvement and was pretty uninterested.

[cammykitty · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this book because I work in a school that is extremely diverse. The kids are hungry for stories about Latinos. Laura McNeal's Dark Water is told from a Gringa point of view, but it will still appeal to Latina readers. It's a romance, so you might have trouble getting the boys to read it, but the danger level is high enough to interest them. Pearl and her mother are struggling to make ends meet and to rebuild their lives since their father has left them, and left them deeply in debt. They are living on Pearl's uncle's avocado ranch in California. Pearl convinces her uncle to hire Amiel, a mute migrant worker form Mexico. And so the romance begins, but from the very beginning of the book, the reader knows it is going to end in flames, one of those uncontrollable wild fires California is known for. The book is an appealing romance, but for the more careful reader, it is also a social exploration that works using contrasts: a romance with a French woman, adultery, romance with older women, romance with younger women, poverty gringo-style, poverty migrant-style. The more I think about the book, the more I appreciate it. Definitely a worthwhile book.

[mjsbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set at the time leading up to the Fallbrook, California Wildfires of 2007. Pearl, niece of an avocado farmer, falls in love with Amiel, a farmworker. Melodramatic but thought-provoking.

[lilibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pearl and her mother live on a cottage on her uncle's farm since her father left and they couldn't afford to stay in their house. Attracted to a migrant worker on the farm, Pearl tries to form a friendship and possibly more with this mysterious and damaged boy who lives alone in the woods. When a wildfire overtakes their town and their farm, Pearl runs to warn Amiel, endangering herself and changing her family.

[tatiana_g_29 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I just don't get it, why is it necessary to sell every YA book as some romance story, regardless of its actual content?Just take a look at "Dark Water"'s publisher provided description: "Fifteen-year-old Pearl DeWitt and her mother live in Fallbrook, California... where her uncle owns a grove of 900 avocado trees. Uncle Hoyt hires migrant workers regularly, but Pearl doesn’t pay much attention to them . . . until Amiel. From the moment she sees him, Pearl is drawn to this boy who keeps to himself, fears being caught by la migra, and is mysteriously unable to talk. And after coming across Amiel’s makeshift hut near Agua Prieta Creek, Pearl falls into a precarious friendship—and a forbidden romance.Seriously, doesn't it sound like another "Perfect Chemistry"-like white girl/brown boy, wrong-side-of-the-track type of story which "Dark Water" absolutely is not?Instead, this is a beautifully written, quality literary YA fiction about one girl's confusing summer when she has to deal with many difficult things - her father's infidelity, her mother's unraveling and her cousin's obsessive revenge plans. Yes, there is Amiel, but is it romance between them or a misguided infatuation that ends up costing Pearl way too much?A combination of flawless writing, descriptive and atmospheric without being overwrought and over-ornamented by flowery adjectives and laughable similes, complex relationships and realistic characters, is what makes this novel worthy of its National Book Award acclaim, and definitely not the "forbidden romance" aspect of it.If you, like me, are a fan of Sara Zarr's quiet, introspective novels rather than Simone Elkeles's get-in-her-pants-on-a-dare/sex-in-the-garage romances, "Dark Water" is a book for you.

[msjessicamae · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The thing that initially caught my attention about Dark Water was the reference to avocado groves. I have a lot of family in Southern California and an in-law who grew up on land that contained over 200 avocado trees when her parents bought it. Combine that with what I have heard about McNeal’s writing and I was extremely curious about this book. Since I knew this story was about a girl who meets a boy who works in the groves, I was prepared for some high school girl romantic pangs, what I wasn’t expecting was how deeply real this story would turn out to be. The book is about a girl named Pearl and the path her life takes during a time when many things were changing for her. There are a few mentions of a fire throughout the book but most of the story is about Pearl and Amiel, the boy catches her eye with his circus tricks. Although the fire only takes up a small amount of the actual book, the intensity and reality of it transformed the story into something extremely powerful. That part of the story had the force of someone who had lived through something similar and this confirmed in the Author’s Note. This is a story full of truth and pain. It is about the stupid decisions and infatuations that make being a teenager exciting but also the consequences of those decisions and the heartbreak that everyone experiences at some point of their life in one form or another.