The Water Keeper

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence, child sexual abuse, child abuse, and physical abuse.

According to the state of Florida, human trafficking is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery” (“Human Trafficking Overview.” Florida Courts). In addition to being reported in all 50 US states, 16,554 individual cases were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2021 (“Is Human Trafficking Happening in the United States?” Our Rescue, 1 June 2023).

Understanding these facts highlights the danger of human trafficking, which is central to Martin’s novel. The protagonist, Murph, is in a years-long battle against human trafficking, finding new women and girls who have been kidnapped and sold into sexual enslavement. Murph likens human trafficking to historical race-based enslavement and records the names of those he has saved (or tried to save) on the walls of his church, which once stood as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The novel explores the impact of human trafficking on several girls, like Angel and Casey, giving name to the experiences of young girls throughout the United States who survive trafficking.

The novel reflects certain aspects of human trafficking accurately while heavily sensationalizing other aspects of it. It is true that the majority of trafficking targets are women and girls, as is the case with Angel in The Water Keeper, but men and boys can also be the targets of trafficking. It is also true that sexual exploitation accounts for the majority of trafficking cases (59%), but trafficking can also involve other abuses, such as forced labor and organ trafficking (“The Truth About Human Trafficking.” SAFE).

However, traffickers “do not primarily employ kidnappings, contrary to portrayals in popular media. Instead, they lure most targets through fraudulent job offers, deceptive recruitment practices, or false promises of a better life” (“The Truth About Human Trafficking”). The novel’s heavy emphasis on kidnappings therefore creates an inaccurate picture of how and why many targets of trafficking become ensnared, with Martin’s kidnapping device used more for the sake of creating suspense and action sequences than accuracy. While some readers and commentators have praised The Water Keeper for its brisk pacing and romance, others have criticized it for its sensationalism and its emphasis on the action-packed exploits of the male hero, which some feel distracts from the seriousness of human trafficking as a real-world issue.