The Waters & The Wild by DeSales Harrison

A patient, a poem, a death, a post office box, and Father Spurlock.  What do all of these have to do with Dr. Daniel Abend and his patient, Jessica Burke? Father Spurlock wants to know too.

Jessica had been a patient of Daniel’s, committed suicide, and with careful planning somehow had mailed letters to Daniel after her death and then three years later. 

The puzzling thing was how that letter could have been mailed by Jessica when she had been dead for three years?  Another thing that confused Daniel is that from these papers, he now knew that everything in the investigation was not revealed or seen by the police.

Daniel continued to receive letters about the death. These papers also brought back memories of what happened long ago in Paris.

When Daniel’s daughter, Clementine, disappears after she finds something about long-ago Paris, and then shows up at Father Spurlock’s telling him that her father mailed him something, Father Spurlock became more confused because he had received nothing.

Then all of a sudden letters and clues begin showing up, and Father Spurlock was extremely bothered by them because his only connection to Jessica Burke was when he did the service for her funeral, and he had no idea why he would be involved in whatever was going on.  He is also bothered because Daniel was the one directing all this correspondence to him, telling Father Spurlock the story, and putting the responsibility on him.  

THE WATERS & THE WILD has a gorgeous cover that rivals with the gothic, troubled, complicated story inside.

THE WATERS & THE WILD has beautiful writing - detailed and elegant.  The author's style itself seems like a poem.

There are a lot of powerful and sometimes very deep, thought-provoking passages.  I would call this book very scholarly in the writing aspect.

I enjoyed the book because of the writing and the SLOW march to the revelations.  It did drag on a bit at times along with confusion, but all in all it turned out to have a very interesting, brilliant ending.

THE WATERS & THE WILD is a story of love, regret, revenge, and secrets.  

If you like slow, steady, odd, and addictive, you will like this book. 4/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.