“The Water Dancer,” is the first novel of Ta-Nehisi Coates. The main character is Hiram Walker, a slave born under “the Task” who serves as the story’s narrator. Hiram is the mixed-race son of the owner of a Virginia tobacco plantation and a mother who was tragically sold away when he was 5. This hidden trauma gives fuel to a supernatural power, here called the Conduction.
Coates balances the horrors of slavery against the fantastical. Hiram’s potential for Conduction leads him to become involved with the Underground. Coates uses historical figures as an inspiration to his characters. In the North Hiram meets a women named Harriet and they called her "Moses". In historical documents we can find that Harriet Tubman was a woman known as the “Moses of her people, a women who escaped slavery to become a leading abolitionist. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad.
I read somewhere that The Water Dancer's spiritual mother is Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.
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