The Edge of Water

Winner VCU Cabell First Novel Prize
Winner of the Westport Prize for Literature
Winner of the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award

Finalist for New American Voices Award, Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Oregon Book Award

Longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

Best Book of the Year at TIME, Apple, Debutiful, Electric Literature, Well-Read Black Girl, Chicago Review of Books, and Goodreads

Afrocritik Notable African Book of 2025
Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books of 2025

Best Book of the Month at Oprah Daily, Apple Books, Alta Journal, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, The Roots, Write or Die, and Southern Review of Books

Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Water tells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.

In Ibadan, Nigeria, a mother receives a divination that foretells danger for her daughter in America. In spite of this warning, she allows her to forge her own path, and Amina arrives in New Orleans filled with hope. But just as Amina begins to find her way, a hurricane threatens to destroy the city, upending everything she’d dreamed of and the lives of all she holds dear. Years later, her daughter is left with questions about the mother she barely knew, and the family she has yet to discover in Nigeria.

Exploring the love of a determined mother and dreaming daughter who do not say enough to each other until it is too late, the detangling of Yoruba Christianity, traditional religion, and folklore, and the tellings of three generations of daring women—through times of longing, promise, and romance, as well as heartbreak—Olufunke Grace Bankole’s The Edge of Water is a luminous debut novel about a young woman brave enough to leave all she knows behind, and the way her fate transforms a family destined to stay together.