Blackwater

"One of the finest southern Gothics ever written, Blackwater is generally acknowledged to be the late Michael McDowell's finest achievement, and, taken as a whole, one of the best horror novels of the 1980s ... McDowell was at the height of his powers when he wrote Blackwater, a six-part novel about the powers exerted by the mysterious Elinor Dammert over the citizens of Perdido, Alabama and her ghastly and inexplicable ability to use water to gain her hideous ends"--Http://www.centipedepress.com/horror/blackwater.html (as viewed on Noverber 13, 2014).