Green River
Backwater: A Love Story
By Kate Boudreaux
Boston: Gilded Press, 2022.
346 pp. $16.99 Hardcover.
Reviewed by
Ali Armstrong
Old Salem, Texas, sits near the borderline of Texas and Louisiana, making it the perfect setting for a charming love story woven with southern wit. Fans of Delia Owen's Where the Crawdads Sing or Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes will become enraptured with protagonist Sunday Fredrick, a naturopathic doctor looking to establish new roots in her beloved hometown. Kate Boudreaux's Backwater invites readers to situate themselves into a river town love story that explores the relationship between communities and their environment.
Twenty-two-year-old Sunday Fredrick returns home to begin her career in natural medicine. Despite the ideas of her gold-digging fiancé, Jeffrey, Sunday experiences Old Salem in a new way when she is paired to work with local rebel and heartbreaker, Eli LeBlanc. One week in the East Texas swamplands of Eli's river house adds to the town’s appealing folklore. Alongside this, it forms a friendship (and more) between the unlikely pair. The classic enemies-to-lovers trope is strung from the inaugural pages to the ending chapter and gives the reader into the endearing relationship between Sunday and Eli. While it is predictable of what will happen between the two (sharing the same bed, having to change muddy clothes in a car, and neighbors mistaking Sunday's three-karat engagement ring for Eli's marriage proposal), Eli represents the backwater of Old Salem. He is a perfect folly to Sunday, making the backwater an “unassuming place most people will never notice. Never see. But like all things worthwhile, the backwater's offerings are only exceeded by its humility.” Throughout the novel, he teaches Sunday the importance of Old Salem's land, inhabitants, and history.
Boudreaux does a beautiful job of making Old Salem reminiscent of Texas culture. With references to musical artists (such as Robert Earl Keen) and dance hall two-stepping, hunting, and fishing, the setting makes the story a charming little piece of heaven. But Old Salem isn't the most charming thing about the book.
Sunday is the typical small-town naïve girl engaged to a big-city freeloader, who wants to mooch off her family's estate by marrying her. She falls in love with the charming Southern man who shows her what it means to be treated right. In the ending chapters, the house survives, and they live happily ever after. It's almost as if the predictability of Sunday's trope is supposed to upset the reader. As the story is told from Sunday's viewpoint, we also hear everything she hears as well. Therefore, we know every detail of Eli LeBlanc's past. While this is meant to enhance Eli as a character and love interest, the backstory becomes the obvious reason as to why Eli is the ideal love interest. For example, the story of Eli's childhood pet, a horse named Black Eagle, goes on for a few pages and is not used to foreshadow any events. After Sunday visits the boat house, the townspeople tell her anecdotes about Eli that last in large blocks of dialogue, spanning about two pages each. The unnecessary minutiae give major specifics to minor characters.
Despite these instances, Boudreaux creates a novel that gives the same heart-warming effect as Steel Magnolias. Backwater is ideal for readers who want to sit on their porch, drink a glass of sweet tea, and listen to crickets chirp. It is the perfect book to settle into the importance of staying true to your identity. You may leave home, but you'll never forget your roots.
Ali Armstrong is a graduate student at Texas State University.