Matt Forester

Beneath the Water Lilies Matt Forester

A 2017 Claymore Award finalist, Beneath the Water Lilies challenges southern norms of race, gender, sexuality, and love with a braided plot of ghosts, escaped convicts, violence, and voodoo. A romance sparks between Detective Brad Buchanan and Forensic Scientist Callie Crenshaw as they embark on a voodoo-laden trail of clues and close encounters to uncover the supernatural murder of an old man and a 70-year-old unlikely love story interrupted by unfathomable evil. There beneath the water lilies lies her silent frame. Let's see if we can summon her by calling out her name. In the muddy bottoms of Gould, Arkansas, the children hold hands and circle round and round chanting "Beneath the Water Lilies." They know "Ring around the Roses" and "London Bridge Is Falling Down" and even "Lizzy Borden," but they don't sing those nearly as much. Celia was real, and she was theirs-one of them-a fourteen-year-old girl who mysteriously vanished one brisk November night in 1948. A rumor spread that her body had been dumped in Wolf Slough, one side of which is covered with a green carpet of lily pads. The authorities never dredged the slough looking for remains because no credible evidence suggested that her body was there-only a rumor and a chant that every child in Gould for the past 70 years learned when they were young. No one knows who made it up. Someone did, though. Someone taught it to children.