Book Review: Homewaters by David B. Williams

I’ve only lived in Washington since 2016. I still find myself amazed sometimes when I catch a view of the Puget Sound (which happens pretty often since I live in Edmonds) and remember that I live here. Having grown up in the desert for the first thirty-something years of my life, large bodies of water used to be the stuff of vacations (ok, or daytrips to the beach when we lived in CA), not my regular every day scene.

Because I believe that anything I love is worth learning more about, I borrowed Homewaters by David B. Williams from the library. The subtitle of this book is “A human and natural history of Puget Sound” and I loved how hyper-specific it was. Just a book about the ecology of this one body of water that I happen to live within a couple miles of.

As a human and natural history, the book mainly focuses on the parts of the ecosystem that humans interact directly with, as well as the establishment of human communities in the area, from the first Indigenous people to settle here, to our current cities. This means there ends up being a lot of stuff about boats, warfare, and fishing, which made the book feel like it was written with the stereotypical dad in mind.

I did learn some cool stuff about kelp and geoducks, but my mind wandered a lot when Williams was talking about various naval defenses in the sound. That section was so boring to me I can’t even remember enough to describe what exactly the defenses were, except for the guns that could fire shells so far that if they were set up at Amazon’s building in Seattle, they could hit Microsoft’s buildings in Bellevue, which just made me think about literal corporate warfare and miss whatever Williams said next about boat technology making those guns obsolete.

Part of the problem was that the audiobook narrator has such a generic “narrator guy” voice that I was sure I’d heard him before, but a search of all his non-fiction books in the library turned up nothing familiar, so there must be some school these guys go to in order to sound bland but somewhat genial as they relay dry facts. I suspect this would be better read as a physical or ebook so you could skim the boring parts and read back over the stuff that interested you (and who knows, you might prefer the boats and not care about the kelp).

A cool thing about Homewaters is how Williams works his way up the food web, so that the reader can better understand how impacts on one organism in the sound can ripple all the way up to our beloved orcas, who inspired this book. I also appreciated how it felt realistic in how it depicted the impacts of climate change, overfishing, and other human actions, while offering hope that we can do better and help populations recover.

All in all, this book was a mixed experience for me. I think I would recommend it, just not in the format I chose. And I’d probably only recommend it if you either live near Puget Sound or love visiting this area. I’m not sure it would be as impactful if you have no real concept of the Sound.

TWs and CWs: In addition to the usual reminders of our ecosystem’s fragile state, this book contains discussion of orca Tahlequah carrying her dead calf. It also contains discussion of racist treatment of Indigenous and Black people. There are discussions of illness and injury in animals, mostly fish.

Source and Format: I borrowed the audiobook from Seattle Public Library.

Reading Challenge Prompts

Book Riot: Non-fiction book about nature or the environment. This is about both nature and the environment.

Brick & Mortar: PNW Author. David B. Williams has spent pretty much his entire life here. He writes from a place of really loving the Sound and Washington, which makes the book feel very personal.

Reading Challenge Progress

Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 3 of 25, no bingos.

Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 6 of 25, no bingos.

Book Riot: 5 of 25.

Physical TBR: 1 of 12.

Brick & Mortar: 11 of 25, 0 bingos*.
*I’ve completed several of the non-reading prompts, hence the mismatch with the number of reviews!

World of Whimm: 4 of 24, no bingos.