Behind the Waterline

Winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize

Behind the Waterline takes readers into the home of a teenager and his grandmother in a New Orleans neighborhood on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, where resources are scarce and warnings are few, in a novel that blends magical realism with stark reality.

As Katrina approaches New Orleans, teenage Eric, his grandmother, and many of their neighbors choose to ride out the storm. In her masterful debut, Kionna Walker LeMalle draws readers onto Eric’s street in the Third Ward, where stranded dogs bark in the distance, neighbors drift by on floating doors, and Eric and his grandmother take refuge in his second-floor bedroom.

As the days pass with stifling heat, dwindling supplies, and water rising without mercy, neighbors begin to vanish, and Eric’s grandmother—already known for her eccentric ways—begins to unravel. It is then that Eric, in a dream, a hallucination, or perhaps something more, discovers a hidden room beyond his closet wall. What he finds there sets him on a journey toward survival, painful truths, and the buried history of his people—those he deeply misses and those he never had the chance to know.