The Moving of the Water

"David Lloyd's The Moving of the Water is the first work of fiction to draw from--and recreate--the Welsh American immigrant experience. Anchored in the community of first, second, and third generation Welsh Americans in Utica, New York, during the 1960s, the stories delve into universal concerns: identity, home, religion, language, culture, belonging, personal and national histories, mortality. Unflinching in their portrayal of the traumas and conflicts of fictional Welsh Americans, these stories also embrace multiple communities and diverse experiences in linked, innovative narratives: the criminal underworld, soldiers fighting in World War I and in Vietnam, the poignant struggles of children and adults caught between old and new worlds. A boy in a fairy-tale themed amusement park meets himself as he might be in ten years. A man estranged from his wife and daughter walks into his church at night to commit suicide--and receives a startling revelation. An alcoholic and his great nephew forge an unforeseen intimacy after a chance meeting in a bar. And in the title story, a fiercely independent elderly woman, protecting her proscribed life from the incursions of a neighborhood boy, meditates on suffering and mortality" --