Vikki Wakefield’s The Backwater addresses how class, money, and power impact the delivery of justice, a powerful message that underscores this character-driven suspense debut.
Sabine Kelly is both a legend and a ghost. Born to the town drug dealer who cannot even stay clean during pregnancy, most would say that Sabine never had a chance in life. Strong-willed but smart and responsible, the right opportunity may have given her a shot; or at least she could have had a decent and honest existence in her small town. Instead, she flees after being blamed for a fire that killed nine people, including her mother and little sister. For the last twelve years, Sabine has haunted the backwaters of her childhood refuge, the river, evading law enforcement while the stories about her grow wilder.
When recent divorcee and empty-nester, Rachel, encounters Sabine in a rare sighting, she has dreams of writing the story of her life. A freelance journalist seeking purpose after her husband’s abandonment and the loss of her job, Rachel convinces Sabine to let her side of the Trailer Park Murders be heard.
Sabine agrees, but it will be on her on terms. The two women are using each other–Rachel, for the career opportunity; and Sabine, for the chance at justice. They don’t trust each other, but they don’t need to so long as each gets what she wants.
Told from the alternating perspectives of Sabine and Rachel in non-linear format, The Backwater is a beautifully told examination of class struggle and small town justice. Due to her criminal mother, Sabine has no power and no chance of being heard when the crime takes place. She feels she has no choice but to flee. In current day, she barely exists–she’s not able to have a real life with longtime lover, Ryan, who gives her all her can both materially and emotionally. It’s no way to live, which contributes to her willingness to finally tell her story. Sabine is a complex, fascinating character whose actions may be morally ambiguous but always necessary to her survival.
Rachel is presented as a middle-class, taxpaying, “conventional” citizen; in other words, as the antithesis to Sabine. At one point, she gifts Sabine with unused clothes her daughter had left behind. Sabine’s gratefulness for the other woman’s discards emphasizes the two very different worlds they occupy. Rachel would not have been treated as Sabine was in the aftermath of the fire. In fact, her being in that situation at all would be unnatural.
The truth about what happened that long-ago night in the trailer park is slowly teased out, with Rachel ultimately realizing that the story she’s hearing isn’t ancient history. There are others who still care about the truth to what happened that night . . . and still others who want to bury it.
The Backwater by Vikki Wakefield will be released by Poisoned Pen Press on May 20, 2025.
Sarah Reida only reviews books she overall recommends. A writer of dark comedy thrillers, she is in the process of revising her sophomore novel. Her debut, Neighborhood Watch, received a Kirkus Star and was honored as an Amazon editorial pick as one of the Best Books of the Year So Far 2024. Join Sarah’s elite group of Instagram followers here.
