Behind the Waterline

WINNER OF THE LEE SMITH NOVEL PRIZE

Behind the Waterline takes readers to the home of a teenager and his grandmother in a New Orleans neighborhood on the eve of Katrina, where there are few resources and little warning of what is about to happen, in this novel that mixes magical realism with reality.

When Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans, teenaged Eric and his grandmother and many of their neighbors decide to ride out the storm. Kionna Walker LeMalle’s masterful debut novel brings her readers, like the rising water, onto Eric’s street in the Third Ward, where stranded dogs bark for a time, where neighbors are floating on doors, and where Eric and his grandmother must take refuge in his second floor bedroom. After days of heat, dwindling supplies, and relentless rising water, neighbors begin to disappear and Eric’s grandmother, already known as an eccentric, begins to falter. It is then that Eric--in a dream, a hallucination, or something else--discovers a room beyond his closet wall, a place he has never seen. What he discovers inside will send him on a path to discover secrets to survival, bitter progress, and, ultimately, the history of his own people--those he sorely misses and those he never even knew.

Kionna Walker LeMalle crafts stories and poetry from the distinct culture and history of the American South. Her work has appeared in table//FEAST, The Southern Quarterly, The First Line, and The Bayou Review. She earned her MFA at Houston Christian University, where she now teaches in the Department of Narrative Arts. Her debut novel, Behind the Waterline (Blair, 2025), won the Lee Smith Novel Prize, selected by contest judge Deesha Philyaw.