Broken Bayou

Dr. Willa Watters is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. She is a celebrity child psychologist who pivoted from clinical work to more public-facing positions writing pop-psychology books and hosting a podcast. She is hardworking, driven, and committed to professional success. She put herself through school with little family support and did her best to gain as much expertise as possible in her field. Her work is grounded in empathy and in her own childhood experiences. She notes that her interest in child psychology is rooted in her desire to help children and “to provide them with an advocate” (115). She hopes to be able to work with families in need, promoting parental understanding and facilitating growth and self-awareness in children.

Willa’s interest in child psychology stems from her own troubled childhood. Her mother had both bipolar disorder and addiction, which she, inherited from her own mother. Willa is afraid that she will repeat her family’s patterns and is driven toward psychology as a means to ground herself, but she also realizes that she has special insight into families like her own. She has a fraught relationship with her mother at the novel’s beginning. She resents her mother’s willingness to endanger her children and lives with the emotional scars of having been raised by an unstable caregiver.