The Deep

Yetu is the appointed historian for her people. She was chosen at the young age of 14 to carry the memories of her people, the Wajinru. Memories that would destroy them as a people if they had to carry them year round, but also memories that starve and bring relentless hunger for knowledge if they do not remember their past.

Once a year there is a Rememberance where The Historian will push the memories into the Wajinru so they suffer the history of their descendents as one and then in turn become “full” with the knowledge they hunger for. It is The Historian's job to collect the memories back once the remembering is complete otherwise the Wajinru will, in a sense, explode.  They cannot handle the history of what was.

However this Rememberance Yetu has other plans...she is running away after transferring the descendents' memories and leaving the entire Wajinru people to their fate. She is tired of the constant pain and suffering she endures carrying the history. She knows if she takes the memories back this time...she will die.

For such a small book it is jam-packed with all the emotions. It's not really a book about mermaids. It's about the fact that slavers threw pregnant women overboard and nature took over and changed the babies in order for them to survive. It's also about the history of a tortured people and the importance of remembering that history.

I'm not going to say I fully understood what I read as there was just so much packed in there and, to put it plainly, I will never understand the excruciating pain and deep loneliness that slaves were forced to endure. I will say it's a powerfully beautiful book that touches upon the horrors of slavery and the resiliency of those tortured that managed to move on and find inner peace. This is a definite must read.