Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes’s Clear Water is an atmospheric novel that blends mystery, suspense, and myth to explore the lingering effects of loss and the secrets communities bury rather than confront. Set in a Wisconsin town where young women have been disappearing for years, the story follows Alma Figueroa as she investigates a series of strange sightings involving girls dressed in white. With its snow-covered forests, unsettling supernatural possibilities, and a protagonist struggling to make peace with her past, the novel offers plenty to draw readers into its world. However, an implausible sequence of events in the opening chapter nearly kept me from discovering what the book does so well.
When Alma encounters a girl beside the road during a snowstorm, she takes the girl to the hospital, where it becomes clear that the blood covering her does not belong to her. Given the circumstances, I found it difficult to believe that no one contacted the police, especially when the girl appeared to be a minor. Instead, the hospital receptionist is the only person who questions Alma about what happened, and the hospital ultimately allows Alma to take the girl home. The scene requires readers to accept a series of unlikely decisions without sufficient explanation, and I found myself questioning the author’s grasp of basic hospital procedures before the story had a chance to establish its credibility.
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