TALL WATER

A 17-year-old embarks on a bold quest to fulfil her dream of getting to know her mother.

Nimmi Campbell is struggling: She’s not confident about being accepted into Columbia’s journalism program, she’s an outsider in South Dakota, where her white American father moved them from Boston to be closer to Grandpa, and she’s wrestling with the idea of justice. The U.S. denied her Sri Lankan Tamil mother, who runs a UNICEF orphanage in Batticaloa, a visa, so she hasn’t seen Amma since she was a baby. When her journalist father finally gets a visa to return to Sri Lanka to cover the civil war, Nimmi, who has dual citizenship, sneaks off to join him. Her reunion with Amma is emotional, but Nimmi has mixed feelings about their long separation—and her mother unexpectedly feels like a stranger. It’s December 2004, and when the tsunami hits, the orphanage is devastated. This graphic novel’s most powerful pages are the wordless ones showing the tsunami and the wreckage and ruin it leaves behind. The characters’ human resilience and grit shine through beautifully in the straightforward text and fluid artwork executed in a muted palette. The book offers glimpses of the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka, its political and social history, the presence of international media, and the complexities of migration. Parenthood, found family, migration, and war are some of the themes that run through this poignant narrative.

A strikingly illustrated story of love and war.