Olufunke Grace Bankole – The Edge of Water

In an immigration novel not like others, a Nigerian daughter wants to try life in America, and so once more she enters the visa sweepstakes. Her mother says nothing, though she has been forewarned by a conduit of the oracle, “this time, the order of things will be shaken. The souls will lose their own way.” These are the tensions within Olfunke Grace Bankole’s first novel, The Edge of Water.

There are matters here of faith in self and faith in matters larger than the self, as well as events that outstrip all planning and vision—including the failure to envision some real possibilities. What comes from this is a novel with a linear narrative constructed across an arc whose parts are anything but linear—where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

The Edge of Water was a finalist for the New American Voices Award given by the Institute for Immigration Research, which is presented at the Fall for the Book festival.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Harvard-educated lawyer and recipient of the Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, and her original writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, the Antioch Review and Stand. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and she was a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She also has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Find out more about Grace on her website.

Connect with Grace on Instagram.

Purchase a copy of The Edge of Water on Bookshop.org.

• A powerful exploration of fate vs free will, and how belief systems shape the choices we make.
• Redefines “home” in immigrant stories—less about place, more about identity, community, and peace.
• Moves beyond the typical American Dream narrative, showing the emotional and psychological realities of immigration.
• Highlights women’s resilience and agency, especially within patriarchal and cultural expectations.
• Examines how generational trauma and relationships between mothers and daughters shape identity.
• Shows how small decisions during major life moments can completely alter someone’s path.
• Blends spirituality, Yoruba tradition, and modern life, creating a layered, immersive world.

“We like to think we’re in control—until life reminds us how much of it was never ours to decide.” - Olufunke Grace Bankole

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