“Even all of this that we’re hearing about pollution and the legacy of environmental neglect, particularly in South Memphis — it can be reversed. It can be done.” — Phyllis R. Dixon
Something in the Water (Dafina | Penguin Random House), the fifth novel by Memphis-based writer and entrepreneur Phyllis R. Dixon, is making waves. At a recent launch event, held at Novel bookstore, Dixon discussed her new novel with LaTricea Adams, the president of environmental-justice organization Young, Gifted & Green. Environmental defender, social justice advocate, and Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson called the book “a powerful and timely novel — one that beautifully weaves storytelling with truth-telling about the urgent environmental justice issues facing our communities.”
Dixon’s other published works include Forty Acres, A Taste for More, Down Home Blues, and Intermission, a novel about a singing group in Memphis.
“I took a roundabout way to becoming an author,” Dixon says. Though she always loved to read, she didn’t consider writing as a possible career. So, with a degree in business, she went to work for a bank. The job paid the bills, but Dixon still felt a literary impulse that she had yet to explore.
While living in Houston, Dixon resolved to find a way to make books a part of her livelihood. So, drawing on her business acumen and having seen a need in the community — she sometimes had trouble finding books by her favorite authors — Dixon opened a bookstore specializing in works by Black authors.
Through her work, she had the opportunity to meet a variety of beginning and established authors. “Quite a few of them still had their day jobs and were selling books out of their car trunks,” she remembers. In a media landscape dominated by big-name authors and prepublication marketing blitzes, the “one step at a time” ethos embodied by the authors Dixon met through her store made the work feel more attainable.
At one of the events her bookstore hosted, Dixon met the novelist Walter Mosely, best known for his series of hardboiled crime novels, and told him she had dreamed of writing fiction. “One of the things he said was, ‘Well, what’s stopping you?’”
She mentioned her job, her children, her responsibilities, but even then, Dixon could tell those were flimsy excuses at best. “What was stopping me was me.”
Banking on Books
As part of her work for the bank, she reviewed loan documents for many different businesses. From roller-skating rinks to grocery stores and beyond, Dixon had a bird’s-eye view of their finances and basic business practices. “That gives me a wide context to pull from,” she says.
I always tell people that if you’re on the road, some people drink, some people shop, and some people fool around. What I did was stay in my room and read and write.”
At the time, the “You Know You’re a Redneck If” — or “You Know You’re Ghetto If” — style novelty books were popular. Sensing opportunity, Dixon pitched a similar book — Let the Brother Go If, a humorous book about dating red-flags, and the publisher loved the idea. “We put it together and it came out and sold out, and everything was hunky-dory. I thought, ‘Wow, that was really easy. Forty Acres should be easy to sell because it’s an actual story,’” Dixon remembers thinking at the time.
“It was not.”
Dixon recalls receiving a confidence-shaking number of rejection letters, but she was undeterred. Eventually, with her first novel, Forty Acres, written, she decided to go the self-publishing route.
“I think it gave me more background than most people have. I had my background as a bookseller. I had the background as a self-published author,” she says. Dixon published her first two novels independently before she eventually made the step to the next level. “It wasn’t easy, but I did get a book deal. It’s been a long journey, and every step has taught me something. I don’t think I would have been ready for where I am now, ten or fifteen years ago.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY PHYLISS R. DIXON
Dixon’s book launch at Novel
A Story of Our Time
Something in the Water is the story of a couple, Billie and Cole Jordan, who are experiencing family issues. After Billie’s radio station is sold and she finds herself out of a job, her husband gets an offer to be a professor at an HBCU in his hometown. “When they go there, instead of finding relief, they run into corruption, a water crisis, and life-and-death choices,” Dixon explains.
In the novel, in addition to the major plot points of the water contamination issue, her college-age son’s opioid addiction, and her husband’s possible infidelity, Billie also juggles a car crash and the resulting Workers’ Compensation claim, the political and career implications of her research into the contaminated water, and even the flare-up of an old injury aggravated by the aforementioned automobile accident. Dixon beautifully illustrates the porous “barriers” between the parts of life we think we have neatly compartmentalized. Family, health, work, neighborhood, and environmental issues all bleed together, threatening to overwhelm our senses. If nothing else, Billie’s valiant but imperfect attempts to navigate the interconnected complexities of contemporary life feel real, lived, and all-too familiar.
It’s a reminder that life cannot be put on hold, even for the most righteous of causes. There is beauty to be found in the unrelenting and kaleidoscopic swirl of life’s multihued highs and lows, alongside reminders that progress requires diligent work.
“For my job, I traveled a lot, and there were certain places we knew not to drink the water,” Dixon recalls. “They always had a boil water notice.” In 2022, when news of a water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, hit the national headlines, Dixon was unsurprised. The failure of the O.B. Water Treatment Plant seemed to result from years of neglect, debt and poor staffing on the part of the city’s water utility, a large leak in 2016, a severe winter storm in 2021, and the flooding of the Pearl River in 2022, among still more contributing factors. Not without reason, much of the media narrative centered around institutional racism and infrastructure neglect, as well as state and city budgetary policies being at odds with each other. Memphians, no doubt, will notice some similarities with local debates around the Bluff City’s response after our own severe winter storms.
For Dixon, the crisis called to mind memories of her childhood in Wisconsin, even as it resonated with her experiences as a Memphian and as a traveling businessperson at the mercy of the relative health (or lack thereof) of the local water utility. An author’s note in Something in the Water attests to the importance of water security as a cause dear to Dixon’s heart, both on a personal and a political level. She was inspired by the organization Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (now the Memphis Community Against Pollution) and their successful fight against the Byhalia Pipeline. On a less hopeful note, Dixon’s experiences after the ice storm of 2022, which left her without access to water for nine days, were another ingredient in the stew that became Something in the Water.
“Water and environmental justice are top of mind now in Memphis,” Dixon says, but the current zeitgeist reminds her of environmental issues she saw as a child. “Growing up in Milwaukee in the ’70s, there was this big joke about Lake Erie catching on fire, and the lakes were very polluted. I remember the Milwaukee River was very polluted. You would never think of doing anything recreational down there. Sometimes, that whole side of the city would smell because of the pollution. Since that time, they’ve cleaned it up drastically. They’ve got restaurants and shops, and it’s a very desirable area now.
“What that tells me is that it can be done. Even all of this that we’re hearing about pollution and the legacy of environmental neglect, particularly in South Memphis, it can be reversed.”
Phyllis R. Dixon will sign and discuss Something in the Water on Friday, September 12, noon-3 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, 2130 Exeter Rd., Germantown.
