Amy's Reviews > Wakulla Springs

This was another Hugo award nominee made available for free download to e-readers through the publisher, Tor. I enjoy science fiction a great deal, but had a hard time with this one fitting into that classification. If anything, it merely suggested - teased, perhaps - at science fiction and nothing more. The fact that it was nominated for a Hugo award suggests (teases?) that perhaps I've missed something evident to others.

Despite finishing the book with a puzzled, "What? That was science fiction?" feeling, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the writing. Andy Duncan captured the humid beauty of Florida and made me ache to visit unspoiled Wakulla Springs of the past.

The story manages to span multiple generations despite its being only a novella and manages it with surprising grace. Duncan opens in pre-civil rights era, where Roosevelt is president, Wakulla Springs is host to one of the Tarzan movie shoots, and young, curious, and driven Mayola meets and swims with actor, Johnny Weissmuller. This doesn't sound terribly scandalous until you step back and look at it from a different perspective. It's the 30's, Mayola is black and working as a maid in the hotel where the cast and crew is staying. Black folks aren't allowed to swim in that part of the river. Johnny Weissmuller is a star, he's white, and Mayola is not quite sixteen when she takes this clandestine, late-night swim with the actor.

The novella ends focused on descendents of Mayola's who carry her love of swimming into the present day. It also leaves us with the sad reminder that, in less than a century, the once pristine, fresh water springs of Florida have been polluted - oh, and that even a star as big as Cheetah might one day end up reduced to living in a trailer park.

Wakulla Springs was a very enjoyable read. The subject matter was informative and interesting, the characters fully realized and nearly breathing, and the writing sublime. I'll look for Andy Duncan's writing again.