In the Lonely Backwater

By Valerie Nieman
Fitzroy Books, 2022, 265 pages

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This haunting young-adult novel weaves together two mysteries: an engrossing whodunnit and also the enigma posed by the young woman who could play a role in solving it: Maggie Warshauer, a budding scientist and keen observer of the natural world.

Maggie lives on a cramped and run-down houseboat with her father, Drew, who manages the marina where the boat is docked. Although Drew clearly loves Maggie, his struggles with alcoholism leave him unable to be fully present for her. So does his inability to let go of his relationship with his ex-wife (“my so-called mother,” in Maggie’s words). He writes to her regularly, begging her to come back to him and Maggie. But without fail, the ex returns the letters to him, apparently unread. Drew’s limitations as a parent push Maggie into the role of caring for herself, and often, for him as well.

Beyond her life at the marina, Maggie seems to be a loner by choice, preferring solo outings in nature, or on her sailboat, Bellatrix, to most human companionship. Although she’s seen as an outsider at her high school, she forges a friendship with two young men, Nat and Hulky, also outsiders. And she so vividly imagines a lover, Fletcher, that he seems as real to Maggie as any flesh-and-blood person in her world.

But perhaps her closest companion is the eighteenth-century botanist and taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus—or, rather, Linnaeus’s Tour in Lapland, the remnants of which Maggie discovers in a largely abandoned local church. As the novel unfolds, Maggie immerses herself in Linnaeus’s descriptions of the flora of Lapland, even as she records her own observations of the plants and animals she encounters in the local forest and nearby islands. In these passages of the novel, Nieman brings both the setting of the story and Maggie’s development as a scientist to life, and we are brought along on her journeys of discovery.

Maggie’s largely private world is turned upside down when her cousin, Charisse, disappears on prom night, after having been assaulted by her date. Later, she turns up dead on a houseboat at the marina where Maggie and Drew live and work. And the circumstances are more than suspicious: Charisse had been tied up with rope, and her underwear had been stuffed in her mouth.

A popular beauty, Charisse had been Maggie’s polar opposite, and before her death, the two of them had a nasty falling out, both in person and on social media. Even so, after the prom and her assault, Charisse approached Maggie, Nat, and Hulky in their hangout spot, a local cemetery, for reasons that seem murky to Maggie and her friends. Although Charisse had not been getting along with Maggie, she appeared to have been looking for solace from her cousin after the trauma she’d experienced. And Maggie ends up being the last person to have seen Charisse alive.

For this reason, Maggie comes under questioning by the lead investigator into Charisse’s death, detective Drexel Vann, who had ruled out Charisse’s prom date as a suspect. Yet in time, he—and also Maggie—seem far more concerned about a shadowy figure who appears to be stalking the area around the marina, and who becomes more and more present in the novel, in some truly chilling scenes.

After Maggie, Vann is perhaps my favorite character in the novel. He respects Maggie’s smarts and seems to understand her, in certain ways, more than anyone else does, including her father. One reason seems to be that like Maggie, Vann is a keen observer—not of the natural world, but of human nature. He also looks out for Maggie, constantly worrying that her solo adventures outdoors will only increase the risk of her having a dangerous encounter with the mysterious stranger, who remains at large.

For her part, although Maggie tries to help with Vann’s investigation, she seems reluctant to fully engage with her memories of the night of Charisse’s death, both in her own mind and under questioning from Vann. This opens up the question of what—if anything—she might be hiding from herself, and from authorities, and why. Is this reluctance born of guilt, or is something more complicated going on? In time, Nieman answers this question. All the while, she writes perceptively about Maggie’s interior life, respecting the mystery of it while gradually revealing insights that show Maggie and her past experiences in a new, and sometimes startling, light.

Part of that interior life is Maggie’s strong imaginative drive, which leads her to vividly conjure Fletcher, to give just one example. Her flights of mind reveal how imagined realities can be just as powerful—and, sometimes, even more powerful—than objective realities. And in some circumstances, they have the potential to shape what we see as the truth, and how we convey that truth. (Maggie has been able to make Fletcher seem real to other people, not just herself.) By deeply immersing us in Maggie’s imaginings, Nieman helps us understand how she is able to construct a reality apart from the difficulties she’s had to face.

Ultimately, the novel comes to a conclusion that continues to haunt me. It’s a pleasure to recommend this riveting, psychologically complex, and beautifully detailed novel.