The Plot: Like Water on Stone (2014), Dana Walrath's debut verse novel, tells the story of the Donabedian family who live in Palu in the Armenian Highlands of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. Walrath holds a PhD in anthropology and an MFA in creative writing, and she is the granddaughter of survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915. She notes in her author biography that she completed Like Water on Stone while she was a Fulbright scholar in Armenia. This rich personal history adds depth and significance to a narrative that follows three young protagonists-- Shahen, Sosi, and Miriam-- as they escape their home after an attack on their village leaves them orphaned. Shahen and Sosi are preteen twins and Miriam is their little sister. Shahen is depicted early on in the verse novel as wishing he could grow whiskers like his older brothers and move to America where his uncle lives without fear of the violence surrounding them. Sosi is portrayed as coming of age, experiencing the impacts of puberty on her body, and secretly beginning to fall for a boy in her town. Like Margarita Engle's Silver People, Karen Hesse's Witness, and Allan Wolf's New Found Land, Walrath's verse novel is polyvocal in that it gives voices to multiple speakers throughout the narrative. In Like Water on Stone, the voices of Shahen, Sosi, and Ardziv (an eagle) echo the strongest throughout the narrative. One of the most unique aspects of Walrath's verse novel is her use of elements of magical realism through the inclusion of an anthropomorphic speaker. The eagle's voice runs like an omniscient thread through the narrative, while the eagle himself acts a symbol of hope, strength, and protection for the young protagonists.The Poetry: Beyond the use of persona, one of the strongest elements of poetic technique is the use of imagery. and particularly multiple characters' meditations on the eagle quill as an object of significance. In the first poem in the collection, the speaker of the poem, Ardziv, describes his view from above of the three children:
Three young ones,
one black pot,
a single quill,
and a tuft of red wool
are enough to start
a new life
in a new land.
I know this is true
because I saw it.
We track our quills
when they fall (3).Later in the narrative, Shahen is learning to play the oud (an eleven-stringed instrument which is the precursor to the European lute [348]) with the mizrap (a pick made of eagle quill) from his father: "Papa tells me that mystery and power / come in through the quill, / that eagles were with us / long before Christ" (88). And after their parents and older brothers are killed, Sosi rescues the single quill from the bushes and carries it as a connection to her mother: "the feather has a pattern, / ... like petals or tiny leaves / dyed into its yarn. / I found this quill with Mama (210).
The Page: Like Water on Stone is divided into four parts that each correspond with a year and a place. Part one describes the family's life in Palu in 1914, part two tells of the massacre of 1915, part three describes the young protgaonists' journey in the summer of 1915, and part four takes place in 1919. The narrative is also framed by a cast of characters list, an Armenian proverb, a map, an author's note, a glossary, and a list of resources.I found Wathram's Like Water on Stone to be a fine verse novel, but the focus on Miriam's voice and other characters voices beyond the three primary characters (Shahen, Sosi, and the eagle) was at times distracting and repetitive. I was fascinated by the unique use of magical realism and historical focus of the verse novel though. I give Wathram's verse novel three stars.
