Venessa Vida Kelley’s When the Tides Held the Moon is not merely a novel—it’s a tide of language that pulls you under and teaches you to breathe differently. With poetic urgency and fantastical grace, Kelley merges myth with history, queerness with cultural legacy, and iron with water in a luminous debut that is as politically poignant as it is romantically transcendent. Set in the atmospheric swirl of 1910s Coney Island and told in alternating voices—one tethered to land and trauma, the other to sea and myth—this is a story about captivity and freedom, about the love that dares to surface in places it is least allowed.
Plot Summary: Where Metal Meets Myth
Benigno “Benny” Caldera, a Boricua blacksmith scraping by in Brooklyn’s industrial underbelly, doesn’t call himself an artist. Not officially. In McCoy’s ironworks, he’s “Wheezy,” an asthmatic immigrant mocked and overlooked, even as his delicate craftsmanship outshines his foreman’s crude authority. When Benny is assigned to build a strange, mobile tank for an eccentric client, he doesn’t expect his creation to house a living merman—let alone change his life.
That merman, Río, is no fluke of fantasy. Captured from the polluted banks of the East River and destined to be exhibited in a sideshow freak menagerie at Luna Park, Río is at once otherworldly and deeply human. When Benny meets him, what begins as a cautiously nurtured friendship quickly grows into something more intimate, more dangerous. Their connection is intense, lyrical, and defiant.
But “When the Tides Held the Moon” isn’t a simple love story. Kelley shapes her narrative through the collision of identities: Puerto Rican colonial history, class, queerness, and disability intersect in Benny, just as Río’s existence defies the human desire to categorize. Their love must confront the cost of freedom—what it means to resist when resistance means losing everything, and loving someone means releasing them, even if it means breaking the only sanctuary you’ve ever known.
Characters: Castaways and Kindreds
Benny Caldera: The Artist in Iron
Benny is one of the most richly layered protagonists in recent historical fiction. Scarred by the devastation of Hurricane San Ciriaco and the loss of his family, he arrives in New York not just to fulfill a deathbed promise, but to reclaim agency over his identity. Caught between being “too brown, too poor, too soft-spoken,” Benny is a man forged in fire—both literally and figuratively. His craftsmanship is his rebellion, and his quiet, resilient tenderness makes him one of the most endearing queer leads in speculative fiction this year.
Río: The Captive Current
Told through a voice poetic and oceanic, Río’s perspective offers a lyrical contrast to Benny’s industrial grit. Kelley writes him with a dreamy intensity, imbuing him with wisdom beyond human years and a profound empathy that refuses to be tamed by the spectacle he’s forced into. He is not a Disney merman—there’s no romanticized innocence here—but rather a being shaped by ecological loss and mystical memory. His underwater world is shrinking, poisoned by human development, and his longing for freedom is not just personal—it’s planetary.
The Ensemble: Sideshow Symmetry
The sideshow cast—Matthias the strongman, Sonia the contortionist, Navya the fierce madam—each get their moment to gleam. Kelley wisely avoids caricature, presenting these characters with complex agency, layered motivations, and camaraderie. The “freaks” are a chosen family that both nurtures and constrains Benny. It’s in these interstitial spaces—between performance and reality, between spectacle and survival—that the novel finds its beating heart.
Writing Style: Lush, Lyrical, and Liberating
Kelley’s prose reads like poetry tempered by iron. Her dual narrative structure alternates between the first-person realism of Benny and the mythic, flowing introspection of Río. These stylistic differences are not just aesthetic—they embody the characters’ worlds: Benny’s chapters are dense with industrial imagery and Puerto Rican idioms, while Río’s sections read like psalms sung beneath the sea.
Highlights of Kelley’s style include:
- Immersive dialect blending Puerto Rican Spanish with English, unitalicized and unapologetic.
- Interspersed illustrations and handwritten lyrics that give the book a tactile, intimate feel.
- Deep metaphorical resonance (e.g., the tank as both a prison and a mirror of Benny’s own enclosure).
Themes: Captivity, Craft, and Queer Freedom
1. Love as Liberation
At its core, When the Tides Held the Moon is a love story—not one of easy resolution, but of transformation. Benny and Río’s bond defies binaries: human/creature, captor/captive, man/merman. Their romance unfolds in stolen glances, shared myths, and mutual healing. Love here is not just emotional—it’s political. It demands risk, revolt, and release.
2. Artistry as Resistance
Benny’s ironwork becomes a metaphor for reclaiming identity in a city that tries to erase him. He doesn’t just build a tank—he builds a shrine, a sanctuary, a lifeboat. Through this, Kelley explores the intersection of labor and artistry, particularly for immigrants whose creative gifts are often buried under the weight of survival.
3. Colonial Grief and Belonging
The echoes of Puerto Rico’s colonial subjugation under U.S. occupation ripple throughout the novel. Kelley doesn’t lecture—she evokes. Benny’s memories of post-hurricane devastation, of his Tití Luz’s revolutionary hopes, give the novel political gravity. His isolation in New York is not just personal—it’s systemic.
4. Queerness Beyond the Surface
Kelley refreshingly treats queerness not as a plot twist but a constant current. Río and Benny’s intimacy is written with tenderness and agency, never sensationalized. Their queer love is allowed to exist, to breathe, to ache. It is never questioned. Instead, the question is: can love like theirs survive a world built to drown it?
Critical Perspective: Not Without Its Cracks
Though the novel soars, there are moments when its reach slightly outpaces its rhythm. A few middle chapters, especially those involving the sideshow logistics or extended exposition on the tank’s mechanics, could have benefited from tighter pacing. Occasionally, the lush prose veers close to overwrought, particularly in Río’s internal monologues, which, while beautiful, may challenge readers craving narrative momentum.
Some supporting characters—particularly Eli and Emmett Rhodes—feel more functional than fully developed, included more for plot advancement than emotional depth. However, these are small fissures in an otherwise structurally sound and emotionally resonant work.
Comparisons and Influences
Readers of The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller will appreciate Kelley’s blend of myth and romance, while fans of The Deep by Rivers Solomon will find echoes in the marine setting and themes of generational trauma and transformation. Like Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, this novel leans into pain and tenderness without flinching—though it is far more fantastical and ultimately hopeful.
Final Verdict: A Story That Doesn’t Just Surface—It Submerges
When the Tides Held the Moon is a triumph of speculative queer fiction. It’s the kind of book that invites you to linger on sentences, to reread entire pages just to relive a feeling. It captures the grief of exile, the joy of chosen family, the fire of forbidden love, and the longing for home—in both land and body.
It’s not always an easy read, but it is a necessary one. Kelley doesn’t offer escapism—she offers immersion. And in this tank of moonlit water, you’ll find not just a merman, but a mirror.
Recommended For:
- Readers of lyrical, character-driven historical fantasy
- Queer romantics who crave depth, not tropes
- Fans of authors like Madeline Miller, Rivers Solomon, and Anna-Marie McLemore
- Anyone who believes that love—like the ocean—cannot be caged
