In her debut novel, Behind the Waterline (Blaire 2025), author Kiona Walker Lemalle tells a dual timeline story in two historically significant periods set apart by about four decades.
First and foremost, Behind the Water Line is a coming-of-age story about teenage Eric and a courageous journey that he is seemingly forced to take in a quest to fulfill his writing assignment about someone who is a legend in his family.
Initially Eric can’t imagine anything more interesting than the way his grandma makes chicken salad:
“‘I need an alternative assignment,’ I say.
‘Alternative? But why?’
‘I don’t know any legends.’
‘Oh, but of course you do.’ Our eyes lock. ‘You just don’t know it yet.’”
Eric’s mother died in childbirth, and rumor has it that his only relative, his grandmother, known as Crazy Ruth, drove away his father. Eric is full of questions about his family, but his grandmother isn’t talking. An eccentric woman, Ruth is a study in contrasts. Her antisocial behavior sets not only herself, but also Eric apart. As a result of her behavior and others’ reactions to it, Eric is also socially awkward. However, when someone close to his grandmother tells Eric that she wasn’t always this way, the mysteries surrounding his grandma and his own existence push him forward in his quest for knowledge about his family.
What, he wants to know, happened to make her this way?
The story begins in New Orleans, just prior to Hurricane Katrina, whose forceful fury creates upheavals in the lives of the characters which are mirrored by the very real havoc Katrina brings to the city, and in particular, to this neighborhood. The night of the hurricane, a tree crashes through their living room and Eric’s grandma has to move up to his second-floor bedroom.
Eric is not going to be left unscathed by the turmoil Katrina will cause. On the morning after the storm, he finds his grandmother in a hidden room behind his closet. The room is filled with things he’s never seen before and his grandma is attempting to remove the back of a bookcase. Eric walks around to his grandma, who cautions him not to touch anything. He tries to sit down but falls and hits his head on the floor. Eric vividly sees images and people from other times and places unfamiliar to him.
He later wakes up in his own bed, the wall in his closet is solid, but there is a piece of wood that looks like the back of a bookcase underneath the broken window. He wonder if there actually a room or was he having cellular memories, or visions:
“But I don’t have visions. I dream. There’s a difference.”
Later that day, there is a brief reprieve in the weather and the neighbors gather in the street—until the levees fail. The waters, filled with sewage, rise and fill up the first floor of the house; Eric and his grandma are forced to remain on the second floor for days.
Eventually they are rescued and evacuated to Houston along with some of their friends and neighbors. Beginning anew presents its own challenges, but Eric and Grandma Ruth forge a path with the help of some of their neighbors. They begin to create a new life.
But Eric’s former life still has a hold on him. When he returns to New Orleans on several occasions, something always seems to happen to him. For example, he hits his head and more insights are revealed while he revisits a time of profound unrest and groundbreaking civil rights movements.
The story is artfully presented. Friendships are made and lost, mysteries are unraveled and tragedies are interspersed with some heartwarming moments:
“After a while, when the sun finally goes down and the evening comes, the man whose mother has just died, removes her from her wheelchair and drags her body to the wall of the convention center. He leans her against the brick and crosses her hands and feet. She looks asleep when he’s finished.
He walks over to grandma. ‘Ma’am, would you like to sit in my mother’s chair? She’d want you to.’”
In the end, not only does Eric find answers to questions he wasn’t even asking, but he also finds the legend for his story.
Kionna Walker LeMalle
Kionna Walker LeMalle is a novelist, poet, speaker, and sought-after writing teacher. She has taught writers at every level from elementary through graduate school. Today, LeMalle is an executive writer for the University of Houston-Downtown and an adjunct professor in the Department of Narrative Arts at Houston Christian University. Through Houston’s Writers in the Schools, she served as writer-in-residence at Travis Elementary in the Houston Heights community, offered community writing workshops, and trained writing teachers. Passionate about nurturing community among writers of all ages, LeMalle founded Writer.Teacher.Friend, a virtual writing group.
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