A book about suicide goddesses and waterfalls. 

Legend has it that the first waterfall was created when an angry sea god threw his trident into a cliff with such force that the cliff split open, spewing water like a volcanic eruption.  Through the eyes of Nereid, daughter of this angry sea god, we witness the evolution of this primal waterfall into a powerful symbol of beauty, danger, and sacrifice.  Through Nereid, we witness the stories of women and girls who commit suicide by waterfall, beginning with Nereid herself, and the waterfall otherworld into which they awaken.  Unfolding in spiral rather than linear fashion, this bible of shifting realities and portals between life and death shines light and dark into a world never before imagined.  An afterlife which is neither heaven or hell, it is as uncertain as it is beautiful.

Intertwined with the tales of Nereid and others in her world is the commonality of the Waterfall, whose elemental/diselemental voice adds its own layers to Nereid’s bible.  When the Waterfall speaks, we taste the purity of the first waterfall, we catch the scent of primal element, we are enchanted by the face of magnificent beauty, and we feel the very heartbeat of water as we drown in the roar of the falls.  From Nereid’s lifetime of water, through the hidden pools and passages of her watery world, Waterfall Girls is but a small sampling of legends inspired by waterfalls, woven into the heartbreak of suicide.  

PRAISE FOR WATERFALL GIRLS

“In Kimberly White’s Waterfall Girls, you feel the mist of the rushing water against your skin. The writing is rich and deeply hypnotic, beckoning the reader to keep reading, and to fall. This is an absolutely beautiful and tragic book.”

 —Cynthia Pelayo, Into the Forest and All the Way Through

“A grotesque and lyrical trip into ecofeminism and collective story. Waterfall Girls conjure a neogothic precipice, the natural moments when death, mythos, and beauty dive into making the sublime.”

—Monique Quintana, author of Cenote City

“Kimberly White’s Waterfall Girls oozes with lyrical beauty & wonder. At once experimental and reminiscent of ancient tragedies, I found myself captivated by every presence, every witness, every chorus of language. If you’re looking for writing that will assist you in escaping wholly into a world of lore and originality, writing that will “force-[fill] your lungs and [wash] your consciousness through the veil”, look no further than this stunning book.”

— Kailey Tedesco, author of FOREVERHAUS, Lizzie, Speak, and She Used to be on a Milk Carton

“A portrait of the sublime, of an inevitable force at the convergence of beauty and death. The paradoxical overcoming of an irresistible oppressive force by succumbing to it. Grief, suicide, power, and freedom.”

—Charlene Elsby, author of Hexis

“Waterfall Girls by Kimberly White is a séance for the dead, a meditation on grief, pain, and the murky waters that flow in between. Thought-provoking and written with a gorgeous sadness, readers will be mesmerized by this book-turned-scrying glass, unable to look away and impossible to put down.”

 - Stephanie M. Wytovich, author of Mourning Jewelry

“In Kimberly White’s new book Waterfall Girls, women climb, one by one, to the top of Waterfall to enact their suicides for many reasons. This remarkable poetic sequence is the river that ties them all together, in the voice of the Waterfall, attending nereids and fairies, and in the stories of the women themselves. It is both one long poem and a hundred separate poems, like sprays of water trickling back into a stream. Imagine an anti-Midsummer Night’s Dream, a tragedy where the magic dust is administered too late, again and again. And yet we feel beauty and mystery in that missed connection: “Waterfall speaks as an act of procession. Waterfall speaks as floating bridge; it does not choose the worlds it connects, and it speaks for neither.”

The reader’s task is to dive into the deep current of this notebook of many voices. It’s a long work, yes, but streams ever fresh – a book not about suicide but from inside it, as if each woman becomes part of the waterfall myth as she leaps, and her story is recast from different angles.

Come to this river of words and swim, and you will find more poetry in your life. You may need to come up for air, and then you will enter the water again. White’s Waterfall Girls weaves a spell that the reader can inhabit: “Where the light rises again, I sit on the shore, gaze into the waterfall for answers. There are none. There is scant revelation, only hypnotic voices and leaves of mystery.”

Bob Stanley

Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus, Co-Director, University Reading and Writing Center

Sacramento State University

ISBN: 9781944866884