The Waters: The River Shack

Counting down: Only 57 days until publication!

The Waters got itself written in the only place it could have been written, in a little shack on the Kalamazoo River, a place smaller than the average New York City one-bedroom apartment.

Critics and commentators often note that I am a writer of place. Yes, I write landscape into the very fabric of my stories; and it’s also true that I have to be in the right place to write. Chicago and Boston and Los Angeles didn’t work for me. I wrote my first five books in our swamp house outside Kalamazoo, but this one required something different. And so I took up part-time residence on the bank of the Kalamazoo river in this shack we saved from the wrecking ball (it was condemned and slated for demolition).

Below are as many photos as this blog allows, in no particular order, one showing what the place looked like before we rescued it and now.  We put in a beautiful ceiling, bigger windows, installed a deck that was sturdier than the shack. Since nobody will sell us flood insurance, we live dangerously, and we are likely to be swept away or crushed by ice dams! Turns out it’s an excellent place to write a book—when a friend, Betsy Ramsey Bird, stayed here, she wrote 106 pages in two days. So, welcome to the Waters!

Ellen Lansky, me, Lisa Durose

e with our friend Jonas who helped us clean up.

Here’s Jonas—he was helping us make sense of the chaos!

During first snow in November 2023

Chris and I installed this beautiful cedar ceiling ourselves.

The big flood of 2018 nearly did us in.

the deck is way more sturdy than the house.