Joyce Carol Oates’s 1992 novella, Black Water, is a work of political and psychological fiction. The story is a direct fictional reimagining of the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident involving Senator Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne. It follows 26-year-old Kelly Kelleher in the moments after a car driven by a powerful man known only as “The Senator” crashes off a remote island road into a dark tidal creek. Trapped in the sinking vehicle, Kelly’s consciousness fractures, spiraling through memories of her life and the events of the day that led to the fatal accident. The novella explores themes including Male Power in a Patriarchal System, The Fragility of Identity in the Face of Trauma, and The Corruption of Political Idealism.

Oates is a winner of the National Book Award and recipient of the National Humanities Medal whose work often dissects the darker aspects of American society. Black Water directly confronts the historical scandal involving Kennedy and the death of Kopechne, but it updates the setting to 1989. This transposition allows Oates to critique 1960s liberalism from the perspective of a later, more disillusioned era. The novella was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into an opera, which premiered in 2016.

This guide refers to the 1992 Dutton edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, ableism, gender discrimination, and substance use.

Plot Summary

A rented Toyota, driven at reckless speed by a figure referred to throughout only as “The Senator,” goes off an unpaved road on Grayling Island, Maine, and overturns into black rushing water. The car sinks on its passenger side. Kelly Kelleher, the 26-year-old woman in the passenger seat, registers what becomes a recurring refrain: “Am I going to die?—like this?” (3). From this moment, the narrative moves in a nonlinear spiral, circling between Kelly’s drowning in the present and a cascade of memories, flashbacks, and hallucinations that reconstruct the day of the accident and her life preceding it.

It’s the evening of the Fourth of July in 1989. Kelly and The Senator are in a desolate part of the island, rushing to catch an 8:20 pm ferry at Brockden’s Landing to the mainland. The crash occurs at approximately 8:15 pm when the car plunges into an unseen creek at the apex of an unmarked hairpin curve. Kelly has been holding The Senator’s vodka tonic as he drives, unable to bring herself to say that they’re lost, though she suspects they are. The Senator, dismissive and assured, insists that he knows where they are.

The narrative loops backward to establish how Kelly arrived at this moment. That afternoon, she attends a Fourth of July gathering at the oceanfront cottage of her closest friend from Brown University, Buffy St. John, on Derry Road. Ray Annick, Buffy’s lover and a lawyer who knows The Senator, invited him to the party. The Senator was among three leading candidates for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination before withdrawing from the race, and he declined Michael Dukakis’s vice-presidential slot, ultimately given to Lloyd Bentsen. When he arrived at the cottage shortly after two o’clock, Kelly was initially guarded, thinking, “He’s one of them, forever campaigning” (36). Over the next six hours, she radically revised her opinion.

Kelly’s background unfolds through layered flashbacks. Her baptismal name is Elizabeth Anne Kelleher, but Kelly is her childhood nickname from her friends. She graduated summa cum laude from Brown University with a degree in American studies and wrote her 90-page senior thesis on The Senator’s liberal political philosophy. She’s the daughter of Arthur Kelleher, a businessman and Republican supporter whose politics she finds repugnant, and Madelyn Kelleher, a quietly independent woman who worries about her daughter. A childhood condition called strabismus, a muscular imbalance in her left eye, required surgery, a detail that reveals her parents’ anxious devotion and her father’s deep discomfort with anything he perceives as abnormal.

Kelly’s own political convictions run deep: She volunteered for Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign and was devastated by his landslide defeat, wandering Boston, Massachusetts, in a daze before calling her mother for help. She also volunteers twice weekly as a literacy tutor in Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, teaching Black adults to read, work that she finds meaningful but complicated by her own self-consciousness and condescension.

At the party, The Senator proves warmer and more compelling than Kelly expected: He’s a physically imposing man of 55, as he’s six feet four and has blue eyes and an athlete’s poise. He focuses his attention on Kelly with flattering intensity. They discuss politics, her work, and her recently published article on capital punishment. On a hike through the dunes, he grips her bare shoulders and kisses her. The kiss is deliberate, and Kelly stands her ground and kisses him back.

Throughout the day, she’s aware of a romantic recklessness overtaking her, urged on by a Scorpio horoscope that she and her friends read the night before in Glamour magazine. The Senator, separated from his wife, speaks with surprising vulnerability about his loneliness and frustration that his principles have changed so little in the world. He asks whether Kelly might consider joining his staff. Buffy provides a quiet counterpoint to his liberal image, reminding Kelly, “Don’t forget, he voted to give aid to the Contras” (122), referring to the US-backed rebel forces in Nicaragua.

As evening approaches, The Senator grows impatient to leave. The original plan was to catch the 7:30 pm ferry, but he had more drinks, and they missed it. Before departing, he asks Kelly to carry a second vodka tonic for him in addition to the one he already holds. She hesitates but complies. Buffy, hurt by Kelly’s abrupt departure, whispers in the driveway, “Call me, sweetie! Anytime tomorrow” (142). Kelly knows that if she doesn’t go with The Senator now, she won’t see him again.

The Senator turns off the paved highway onto Old Ferry Road, an unmaintained road with no sign. He’s headed in the right general direction, but the correct turn lies three-quarters of a mile farther along. He drives aggressively, and Kelly tries, as tactfully as she can, to suggest that they’re lost. She remembers her mother’s quiet warning that no man will tolerate being made a fool, and he dismisses her.

Then, the car hits a sandy rut at over 40 miles per hour. The skid carries them through a rusted guardrail into the creek. The passenger-side door and roof buckle inward, pinning Kelly’s legs. The Senator claws free of his seatbelt and forces himself through the driver’s-side door, now overhead. Kelly clutches at his leg, his ankle, and then his foot. His shoe comes off in her hand. She cries out after him, but he’s gone.

Kelly is convinced that The Senator has swum to shore and will return. Trapped in the submerged, overturned car, she orients herself by gripping the steering wheel. Her ribs are broken, and her right leg is caught in twisted metal, but the pain feels suspended by shock. She discovers a pocket of air, a shrinking bubble above her, and presses her lips to it.

Her consciousness fragments. She remembers her dying grandfather offering wisdom and a classmate who attempted to die by suicide, whom Kelly found collapsed and helped save. In a hallucination, Kelly imagines undergoing the same rescue, an emergency team pumping water from her lungs and jolting her heart back to life. No such rescue comes. She remembers fragmented magazine-style snippets, beauty tips, horoscope wisdom, and health warnings. Each time the narrative reaches a moment of intensity, the refrain “the black water fill[s] her lungs, and she die[s]” returns (103), only for the story to pull Kelly back into memory or hallucination.

The narrative shifts to follow The Senator after his escape. He lies on the embankment vomiting water and then flees on foot two miles to the highway. He hides in tall rushes to avoid people, crosses to a telephone booth in a liquor-store parking lot, and calls Buffy’s house, using a false name to get Ray Annick on the phone. His digital Rolex reads 9:55 pm, nearly two hours after the crash. When Ray answers, The Senator tells him about the crash and says that Kelly is dead. He immediately begins constructing a false narrative, claiming that Kelly was drunk and grabbed the wheel. Ray tells him not to say more on the phone and arranges to come get him.

In her final moments, Kelly’s consciousness dissolves into overlapping visions. She bargains desperately, offering to trade her legs for rescue. She swallows the black water in small mouthfuls, reasoning that she’s simply drinking it. She sees her parents amid tall grasses, first impossibly young and then old and haggard, staring as if they don’t recognize her. In a dying hallucination, she sees The Senator diving back to the car, pulling her free. She imagines swimming triumphantly to the surface and seeing the moon. She remembers jogging on the beach that morning. The final passage shows Kelly running in white anklet socks, arms raised to be lifted by her grandfather. The black water fills her lungs, and she dies.