When hard-drinking handyman Jack Calloway discovers an old moonshine still behind the Smoky Mountain cabin he plans to flip, his teenage son dares him to get it running. Jack accepts—until his wife, Jolene, tries to sabotage the first batch and is horribly burned in the process. Wracked with guilt, Jack sends their son away and moves Jolene into the cabin to recover while he tries to sober up.

Doctors diagnose Jolene with a rare post-traumatic dementia that responds only to scent, smell being the strongest trigger of memory. Desperate to help, Jack begins distilling essential oils from her favorite flowers, searching for the one that might bring her back.

When a fleeting moment of clarity during a visit from their son slips away again, Jack grows frantic, willing to distill anything in his grasp to reach her.

A haunting, tender tale of love, regret, and the volatile bonds between parents and children, The Watersmith is a story of oil and water, memory and mercy—and how far one man will go to bring his family home.

Praise for The Watersmith

“The Watersmith is a propulsive and lyrical novel with a palpable sense of place and music in every sentence. This book grabs you from the opening and never lets go.”

—Silas House, author of Lark Ascending, winner of the 2023 Southern Book Award

“An unflinching and highly engaging look at family and legacy and ways we cope with great pain; Wyatt’s lively prose and vivid characters know how to pull a reader in.”

—Aimee Bender, New York Times bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“With The Watersmith, Wyatt reshapes the dark terrain of the Southern Gothic into something uniquely his own. This is not merely a promising debut, it’s the arrival of a fully realized literary voice. A stunning work of imagination, this novel is extraordinary.”

—Andrew Siegrist, author of We Imagined It Was Rain, winner of the Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize

“In his compelling debut novel The Watersmith, Wyatt ventures into the timeless landscape of the American South, where past and present are distilled into a fragrance as potent as moonshine and as evocative as a whiff of honeysuckle.”

—Eric Rawson, author of Banana Republic

“The Watersmith is a haymaker to the heart and a warm bourbon burn to the soul. The prose steams off the page and hangs in the air like the angel’s share. I simply loved it.”

—Driver Williams, songwriter & lead guitarist for Grammy award-winning country artist Eric Church