He had recently finished his first memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, and was encouraged by his agent to write fiction. Moses is later revealed to be Harriet Tubman.Ĭoates began writing the novel around 20. He eventually comes to meet a famous member of the Underground named Moses, who also has the power of Conduction. Hiram escapes to Philadelphia, where he encounters Box Brown and Jarm Logue.

He eventually becomes involved with the Underground Railroad. This conduction is triggered by powerful memories: those of his mother. He learns that his miracle survival was a result of a superhuman ability he has called conduction, which transports himself and others across impossible distances. His (white) half brother drowns, but Hiram is transported out of the water. When the vision ends, his carriage has fallen into the water. However, in one instance when Hiram is driving across a bridge he suddenly has a vision of his mother dancing. Hiram has an extraordinary photographic memory but is unable to remember his mother. The local community consists of the enslaved ('the Tasked') the landowners ('the Quality') and the low-class whites ('the Low'). He is the mixed-race son of a white plantation owner and a black mother who was sold away by his father when Hiram was young. Hiram Walker was born into slavery during the Antebellum South on a declining tobacco plantation in Virginia named Lockless.

The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list and was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club. This power is based in the power of memory and storytelling and can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways. It is a surrealist story set in the pre–Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and, late in the novel, is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as 'conduction'. The Water Dancer is the debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published on September 24, 2019, by Random House under its One World imprint.

The dancer ahmad tohari