In the early years of the 20th century, the Caskey family of Perdido, Alabama has always lived and died at the whims of the treacherous Perdido and Blackwater rivers, upon which their logging empire depends. Once per generation, the Perdido River floods, wiping out the town of Perdido and its people...all but for the wealthy Caskeys, whose position at the highest crest of town affords them both safety and a fine view of the destruction. Yet the Caskeys live in the knowledge that sooner or later, the Perdido and the Blackwater will flood at the same time, and not even they will be spared.
Enter Elinor Dammert, a stranger rescued from the highest floor of the town's only hotel after a particularly devastating flood. Elinor rapidly insinuates herself into small-town life, becoming a beloved member of the community and attracting the attention of Oscar Caskey, the town's wealthiest and most eligible bachelor. Only Oscar's manipulative and controlling mother Mary Love suspects Elinor's true motives, but even she could never guess Elinor's secret supernatural connection to the rivers that control the family's fortune and its fate.
What follows is the fifty-year saga of the Caskey family as Elinor's influence brings prosperity, animosity, death, and reconciliation to the entire town of Perdido.
This novel contains examples of:
- All Lesbians Want Kids: Grace and Lucille are happy to raise Lucille's child together on their farm.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: Frances initially has no memory of what happens to her in the water. Only when she involuntarily shapeshifts on land does she realize what's happening, and the truth traumatizes her.
- Ambiguously Gay: James Caskey had one unhappy marriage and seems uninterested in finding a new mother for his young daughter. He also has a number of habits that are perceived as effeminate, including his fussiness for keeping his little home tidy and beautifully decorated. The closest the family comes to acknowledging that his long bachelorhood might be due to a sexual preference is to say that James is "particular" and "not cut out for marriage."
- Similarly, Grace is pretty unambiguously a lesbian, but since the time period doesn't allow the family to acknowledge this openly, the closest we get is when Elinor points out that Grace "was born to dote on girls."
- Anyone Can Die: Since the novel spans fifty years, many of the characters we meet in the first chapters die from natural (and unnatural) causes by the final one.
- Asshole Victim: Several. All of them suffer such gruesome deaths that it's almost out of proportion with their crimes.
- Genevieve is thoroughly unpleasant. She gets her head torn off for hurting Grace.
- Queenie's estranged husband Carl, who abuses and rapes Queenie gets literally folded into a croker sack and tossed, still alive, into the river.
- Travis Gann, a sneering small-time thug who violently assaults Lucille, has both his arms torn off before being fed alive to alligators.
- Mary Love dies a slow, miserable death by poisoning once Elinor sees the lengths to which she's willing to go to hurt Oscar.
- Baby Be Mine: Mary Love essentially demands Oscar and Elinor's firstborn daughter as tribute in order to make her stop interfering with their marriage. It's only the first of many exchanges of children in the series.
- Big Eater: Grace is always the first to sit down at the table and the last to stand up from it. In spite of her prodigious appetite, she's so high-energy that she's been the same size since college.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: On one hand, Elinor is devoted to the Caskeys and to the town of Perdido and will do whatever is required to benefit both, with no more motivation than that she loves to be the head of a big, sprawling, successful family. On the other hand, she doesn't have a lot of qualms about either murdering or eating humans, with little regard for how innocent or guilty they might be. Both sides of her nature are presented without judgement, even though her actions would make her a Villain Protagonist in any other story.
- Came Back Wrong: Mary Love and John Robert linger as murderous spirits bent on revenge, with very little resemblance to their personalities in life. Even Carl, who was already a nasty piece of work when he was alive, comes back even worse.
- Child by Rape:
- Queenie's son Danjo.
- Lucille's son Tommy Lee.
- Children Are a Waste: Miriam is much too busy to waste time having children when she has a business to run. When Queenie mentions that Miriam only has a few more childbearing years left and that she'd better get started, Miriam replies that any child she finds in her house will have its head used as a pincushion.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Several. Oscar's death in particular is notably cruel considering that, unlike many other characters, he does nothing to deserve it. (McDowell in general is fond of writing these kinds of deaths.)
- The Deep South: As with several of McDowell's novels, it's set in the Wiregrass Region of south Alabama, with all the requisite sultry summer days, complicated and interconnected racial politics, and Southern Gothic trappings you might expect.
- Delicate and Sickly: Frances spends two years of her childhood in bed, suffering from arthritis. As an adult, she's noticeably more delicate than her sister Miriam.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Billy Bronze. When it seems he can't get Frances's attention, he's perfectly content to be a helpful satellite member of the family while he waits for her to notice him.
- Family Theme Naming: Annie Bell Driver's three sons Roland, Poland, and Oland, are not triplets.
- Friend to All Children: Children take to Elinor immediately: little Grace attaches herself to Elinor's hip within hours of meeting her, Zaddie Sapp is devoted to her, and the entire fourth grade class becomes the most well-behaved kids in school because they love their new teacher so much. Even the bratty Strickland children don't cross Elinor.
- The Fundamentalist: Annie Bell Driver is a hardshell Baptist preacher whose endless sermons dwell on sin and damnation. In a subversion of the usual trope, she's also one of the kindest characters in the story: she opens both her church and her own house to the townsfolk in the aftermath of the flood and immediately befriends newcomer Elinor.
- Generation Xerox:
- Elinor tells Frances that Elinor's sister Nerita was unable to live on land and had to be returned to the river shortly after birth. The same thing happens with Frances's first daughter.
- Miriam grows up to resemble her grandmother Mary Love in both looks and personality. When Mary Love dies, Miriam takes over her house and insists on living as her grandmother did. In the saddest resemblance of all, Miriam ends up taking her sister's second daughter Lilah, just as Miriam herself was taken by Mary Love as a child.
- Late in life, Sister also tries to take up Mary Love's controlling mantle. She begins to look, act, and speak like her late mother; Oscar even notices that their handwritings are the same. But by then, the family has outgrown its need for a Mary Love, and the closest Sister truly gets to becoming her is dying a similar death.
- The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Miriam and Frances are not raised in the same house and barely seem to be siblings at all, yet haughty, assertive Miriam never misses a chance to belittle sweet, submissive Frances, even as Frances admires Miriam and tries desperately to make her like her.
- Hates Their Parent: While Miriam barely acknowledges her father's existence, she openly despises Elinor. Though they eventually reconcile when Miriam's in her 40s, their relationship remains cool.
- Hazardous Water: It's not just what's in the water that's dangerous, but the water itself, particularly the deadly whirlpool at the junction.
- Heal It with Water: Played with. It's not clear, pure water Elinor uses to cure Frances, but the gritty, muddy waters of the Perdido.
- Hugh Mann: When she first arrives in Perdido, Elinor is pretty bad at acting human. One of the first things Oscar notices is that she seems to have learned English by eavesdropping, She continues to have occasional slip-ups for the rest of her life: for example, since she doesn't need to drink, she simply doesn't unless someone points it out.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Elinor rather matter-of-factly eats several people through the course of the series.
- Kissing Cousins: Grace and Lucille are cousins via marriage who start a romantic relationship. Miriam surprises the whole family by unexpectedly marrying Malcolm, who's also her cousin by marriage. Years later, Lilah and Tommy Lee, who were raised as cousins (though, again, not blood-related), get married.
- Legacy of Service: The Sapp family to the Caskeys. The Caskeys take on the latest generation of Sapps as the older ones retired, and whenever a Caskey starts a new household, another Sapp comes along as a housewarming gift. When Ivey Sapp becomes sickly and senile while in the Caskey's service, the family hires two other Sapps: one to take over Ivey's duties and one to care for Ivey herself.
- Loves Only Gold: From a very young age, Miriam becomes obsessed with acquiring expensive jewelry, which she keeps locked up in numerous safe-deposit boxes, but never wears. In spite of this, she knows the provenance of every single jewel she owns, down to the place she bought it and how much she paid, and has never so much as misplaced an earring back. Her obsession stems from a diamond ring that Elinor stole from Mary Love, which had been promised to Miriam.
- Love Potion: Sister enlists Ivey to cast a love spell to win the man she thinks she loves. It does not end well.
- Matriarchy: It's understood—but unspoken—among the Caskeys that the women truly rule the roost. The plot of much of the first half involves the struggle for power between reigning matriarch Mary Love and newcomer Elinor. Much later, Billy Bronze instinctively recognizes and is drawn to the power the Caskey women wield, going so far as to state outright that the reason he wants to marry into the Caskey family is so he can be a part of their circle of strong, capable women.
- Missing Mom: Frances abandons land for the river shortly after the birth of her daughter, who is told her mother drowned.
- My Beloved Smother: Mary Love manipulates the Caskey family both emotionally and financially by only doling out the family fortune to keep herself looking generous (and to make sure that no one has the wherewithal to ever escape her).
- Nice to the Waiter: Elinor is adamantly and publicly generous to the people who work for her, both in terms of pay and in her insistence on treating them as equals. Considering this is the Deep South in the early 20th century, and that Elinor is a white lady whose employees are mostly black, this does make a few tongues wag. On the plus side, the habit rubs off on the rest of the family, too.
- Old Maid:
- It seems like this is what Miriam will become until she makes a surprise marriage in her 40s. Meanwhile, Grace passes herself off as one of these, even though privately it's understood that she's actually a lesbian.
- Sister Caskey is regarded as an old maid by the whole town until she makes a desperation match in her mid-30s. Though she remains married another thirty years, she's estranged from her husband and doesn't even live in the same city as he. Late in life, she admits to him that she was born to be an old maid and their marriage was a mistake.
- Old Retainer: Zaddie has worked for the Caskeys since she was a child and grows old in their employment. Other than Frances, she's the only one who knows all Elinor's secrets. When Elinor finally dies, Zaddie is one of only two people Elinor will allow at her side, even sending away her own daughters. Zaddie wouldn't have it any other way.
- One-Gender Race: Elinor rarely speaks about her "people" but gives several strong hints that they're all female. Every time she gets pregnant, she immediately starts referring to the unborn child as female, and when Frances is pregnant, Elinor seems surprised she would even consider that the baby might be a boy.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Elvennia Caskey has been called "Sister" for so long that many of the younger characters don't even know her real name. About halfway through the book, she tries to go back to her real name, but no one will use it.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Elinor is so different that it's hard to say she even counts as a mermaid. Her underwater form resembles a vaguely humanoid alligator.
- While the rules are never directly explained, it seems that having a mer-mother doesn't necessarily mean you will yourself become a mermaid: you could be completely human (like Miriam), completely aquatic (like Frances's daughter Nerita), or capable of living both on land and in the water (like Elinor and Frances).
- Polar Opposite Twins: Nerita and Lilah in the most extreme sense possible: they're not even the same species.
- Shapeshifting Lover: On several occasions, Elinor hints that she left "her family" specifically to marry Oscar Caskey and make him rich. Strange as she is, her love for him appear to be genuine.
- Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: Grace was considered a sickly, puny little girl always suffering from one ailment or another, but she outgrows it to become a robust, athletic adult.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Mary Love mistrusts Elinor from the moment she sees Elinor's red hair, which is the exact color of the clay-stained water of the Perdido. Elinor's status as an outsider is reinforced by the fact that she is the only redhead in town.
- So Proud of You: As she lies dying, Elinor tells Billy that she considers him her true son, an acknowledgement that carries even more emotional heft since Elinor is from a One-Gender Race that cannot bear sons.
- Southern Gothic: Boy howdy. Scheming, backstabbing matriarchs, elegant but decaying mansions, swampy backwater towns in the depths of Alabama, plenty of venomous snakes, decades-long grudges, gruesome accidents...and all that's without the supernatural stuff.
- Sunken City: What Perdido becomes.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Young Frances absolutely refuses to sleep in the front bedroom because she believes there's a ghost in Elinor's tiny shoe closet. She's right.
- Would Hurt a Child: Elinor tears John Robert DeBordenave limb from limb as a child sacrifice to the levee. The only reason she chooses him in particular is because she knows his parents will leave town if he's dead, and Elinor wants their share of the mills.
