The Ways of Water: A Novel

Winner of the Southwest Book Award, Eric Hoffer Award, and the Wrangler Award for Outstanding Western Novel.

As Josie Belle Gore, daughter of a Louisiana train engineer and Texas seamstress, journeys with her itinerant family through the deserts of the boom-and-bust American West and revolutionary Mexico, she learns that in her life, two things are constant: the preciousness of water and her role as the savior of her family. After unforeseeable circumstances force her family to scatter, Josie begins an odyssey that takes her from New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto to Austin, Chihuahua, Tucson, and post-WWI San Francisco, suffering betrayal and survivor’s guilt along the way. She comes of age as the American West expands—and as the world reels from a world war, raging pandemic, and the changes they bring. 

With the help of compassionate friends and relatives and no small amount of grit, Josie fashions an independent life for herself; and like a river meeting the sea, with nowhere else to run, she must make peace with the past and make good on her promise to the family she loves. A tale of loss, hope, and forgiveness, inspired by family lore, The Ways of Water is a heart-warming story of a resilient young woman charting her course in a dramatically new world.


“An inherently fascinating, deftly crafted and eloquently entertaining saga of a novel from start to finish…impressive.” —MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW


'The reader is shown the quiet beauty that exists in the desert and that can be found even in the most dysfunctional of families.” —BOOKLIST


“Janssen writes in Josie’s voice, which allows readers to get to know her as a brave, complicated woman, and witnessing her growth as a confident person is an engaging experience…Janssen creates a believable West.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS