Water Finds A Way
Recently released from prison, reclusive Blake Alvares returns to the only place she ever felt safe, the now derelict Maine town in which she harbored as a teen. Determined to conceal her secrets and losses, she soon finds herself dragged into others’ lives when she rents a room from an ailing widow and takes a job on a boat owned by a notorious young lobsterman named Leland.
Leland Savard is nearly broke, trying to support himself and 9-year-old Quinnie as he wrestles with a dangerous family legacy. Despite all odds, he and Blake forge a successful working partnership, and as she establishes a timid friendship with widowed Nora, Blake glimpses what it might mean to truly belong. But when Leland’s rash actions place her and Quinnie in peril, Blake feels forced to run again. On her quest for home, she must confront a daunting question: can she ever again trust in human connection?
– Winner: 2025 IPPY Silver Medal
– Honorable Mention: Eric Hoffer Book Award
– Finalist: Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award
– Finalist: Next Generation Indie Book Award
– Finalist: National Indie Excellence Award
About the Author
Meghan Perry
Meghan Perry grew up in New England. She holds a BA and MAEd from the College of William and Mary, in addition to an MFA from Emerson College. She began her career in education teaching high school English in New Jersey, during which time she published short stories in Sycamore Review, Cold Mountain Review, Passages North, Prism Review, Permafrost, and The Fourth River. Her debut novel, Water Finds a Way, was published by Delphinium Books and Penguin Random House Audio in 2024. It received a Kirkus Star, as well as an IPPY Awards Silver Medal. The novel was also named a finalist for both the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award as well as the Next Generation Indie Book Award, and it was recognized with an Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards.
Interview with Meghan Perry.
Your novel opens with Blake returning to a rugged Maine fishing town that both made and broke her. If you had to describe what she’s walking back into — not just the place, but the ghosts she left behind — how would you paint that moment for readers?
MP: When Blake returns to Raker Harbor at the age of 44, she has just been released from a twenty-year prison sentence. Her grandparents–the only people who ever showed her real kindness–have passed away and left her their dilapidated saltwater farm. Blake arrives wearing a full suit of emotional armor forged over decades of trauma and struggle. While she yearns to find the peace that this isolated nook of Maine once offered her, she fears the memories that returning to it may resurrect. In the very first scene, we witness her unearthing a grave, but this is just the beginning of her attempt to reckon with a tragedy that sent her life hurdling in a catastrophic direction.
Water in your book is never still — it floods, pulls, and reshapes. It’s also the only constant Blake can’t escape. How did you think about water as a mirror for the ways people adapt, erode, and survive?
MP: There is nothing on earth more powerful than water. But within us, there exist metaphysical forces that possess equal might, and they act upon us, sometimes at a glacial pace, other times much more rapidly, sculpting us, wearing us smooth or ragged. Guilt, fear, and regret are a few of these forces. So is love. When I look at water, I think of these forces, and by the end of the novel, Blake is thinking of them, too. She has to choose the one to which she will grant dominance.
Blake’s past — her time in prison, her fractured family, her complicated sense of home — shadows every decision she makes. What kind of redemption did you want her to be searching for?
MP: The abuse Blake suffers early in life robs her of her childhood, and the tragedy she confronts later in adolescence leaves her hollowed out by grief. By the time she enters prison, Blake has given up hope for herself, and when she exits decades later, her trust in human relationships is gone. She has grown so emotionally repressed that feeling anything, good or bad, frightens her. I wanted Blake to get to a place where she opens herself to feeling—a place where she can learn to trust her heart again. When she does, she discovers she is so much more than her mistakes.
The town feels on the verge of collapse — both economically and spiritually. How did you capture that tension between a vanishing way of life and the people trying to hold on?
MP: This tension exists in so many parts of rural America, and I think young people are uniquely affected by it. The relationship between the two young adult characters in the novel, Leland and Morning Glory (Nora’s daughter), very much reflects that tension. Though both feel a deep affinity for the ocean they were raised upon, Morning Glory, an aspiring medical student, seeks to distance herself from the realities of poverty, substance abuse, and lack of education that pervade her home community, while Leland sees himself as inextricably rooted in them. Morning Glory laments what she sees as Leland’s lack of ambition, but Leland appreciates aspects of their home in a way Morning Glory cannot. He takes pride in the tradition of fishing and the independence inherent to his trade, and though socio-economic circumstances have propelled him to make some poor decisions, he feels a loyalty to his family and his roots that Glory herself regards as burdensome. Ultimately, both of these characters have to reckon with the ways they have been shaped by their community.
The relationship between Blake and Leland simmers quietly under layers of mistrust, obligation, and suppressed desire for connection. What did you want that push and pull to reveal about each of them?
MP: At the beginning of the novel, only their mutual need to make a living allows Blake and Leland to tolerate one another. On the surface, they hold nothing in common: Leland, 25, is a reckless, white, single father with a drinking problem, while Blake is a middle-aged, mixed-race woman with zero tolerance for alcohol or antics. Each heaps judgment upon the other, but working within the close quarters of a lobster boat slowly forges a trust between them. Blake comes to recognize the ways in which Leland feels trapped by his past, and this allows her to empathize with him in ways the rest of the world does not. Meanwhile, Leland witnesses Blake’s steadiness and her affection for his daughter, Quinnie, and he grows to respect her above other influences upon his life.
Leland’s daughter Quinnie seems to see Blake without judgment — something the adults struggle to do. What role does innocence play in a story built around regret and survival?
MP: Of all the characters, Quinnie is the greatest catalyst to Blake’s emotional rebirth. Her innocence elicits a fierce protectiveness from Blake, and it is that protectiveness that transforms Blake into the hero Quinnie believes her to be from the beginning. Sometimes innocence is the only bridge for human connection. It serves as a buoyant force in this novel.
Nora, the widow Blake rents from, becomes a quiet anchor in the chaos. How do you see her influence on Blake’s attempt to rebuild herself?
MP: Despite her initial hesitance at Blake’s appearance and gruff manner, Nora treats Blake with kindness. Her gestures of friendship irritate Blake at first, but Nora’s persistent efforts to engage her eventually work, largely because, like Quinnie, she chooses to believe in Blake’s goodness. Through her gardening and quiet conversation, Nora helps Blake rediscover the hidden beauty in the world as well as the simple joy of companionship. She becomes the first real friend Blake has ever had, and out of terror of losing her, Blake does not tell Nora about her past—a choice that jeopardizes all that she is building toward.
There’s a moment where it feels like everyone in the town is drowning in something — debt, grief, guilt, the tides. Was that sense of suffocation intentional?
MP: Absolutely. All of us live surrounded by forces that might easily drown us. These characters face a confluence of those forces, and many are floundering because they are trying to tackle them alone. I wrote this novel during the pandemic, at a time when human isolation and loneliness were at the forefront of my mind. Really, every character in this book is drowning in a form of loneliness, be it social, spiritual, or existential.
The title Water Finds a Way suggests inevitability, persistence, and the quiet power of time. When did you know that was the right title — and what truth do you think it carries for Blake by the end?
MP: The title Water Finds a Way came late in the process of publishing this book. The manuscript had been acquired under a different title, and the publisher requested I come up with something different. Naturally, I thought about the real movement occurring within the novel, as well as Blake’s profound sense of connection to the ocean. Much like the path of water flowing toward the sea, her path to redemption is far from linear. It takes her on some challenging detours, but ultimately, she arrives. As soon as I landed on this title, I knew it was the proper one.
Your dialogue feels carved from real New England grit — clipped, unsentimental, but full of heart. How did you approach capturing the rhythms and restraint of that community’s voice?
MP: I grew up in New England, so some of this is just second nature to me. But I am also a shameless eavesdropper. Whenever I am out in the world, I love listening to the conversations that surround me in restaurants or other public venues. It’s a wonderful way to pick up on the authentic character of a community, and I did a lot of that whenever I was visiting Downeast. I think it’s safe to say I’m a frustrating person to bring on a dinner date because I always have one ear trained on everything going on around me!
The book ends not in grand resolution but in something quieter, earned. What do you think Blake finally understands about home — and about herself — that she didn’t when she arrived?
MP: By the end of the novel, Blake finally recognizes the goodness that lives inside her. For so long, she regarded herself as a vacuum of darkness, but really, there has been light all along, and the other characters help draw it out of her–just as she draws it out of them. At last, she believes that she deserves a home, but she has also learned that putting down roots takes courage, and that home is defined by more than mere geography.
If readers walk away with one lingering image — one that stays with them long after the final page — what do you hope it is?
MP:This is obviously a novel about human connection, but it is also about connection to the natural world. I believe that so much healing–psychological, spiritual–can begin by turning toward nature. Blake’s healing begins when she returns to the ocean she loves. The image of her running along the breakwater for the first time, arms flung out and whooping like a teenager, is one of my favorites in the novel. In that moment of return, she is briefly able to shuck off all her pain and heaviness and yield to the exhilaration of wind and water. Certainly, that is just the beginning of her journey, but I hope readers will appreciate how Blake undertakes it—with two feet stumbling across a line of sea-splashed rocks that she pursues breathlessly to its end.
Find a featured excerpt of Water Finds A Way on PAGE 26 in the December/January/February Issue: 2025 Indie Best Award Winners.
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Article originally Published in the December/January/February 2025 Issue “2025 Indie Best Award Winners”