David Hardin | WATER FINDS A WAY| Presented by Sidetrack Bookshop

Sidetrack Bookshop presents author David Hardin in celebration of his memoir, Water Finds a Way.
Date : Wednesday, September 2, 2026, 6:30pm - 8pm. Doors open at 6pm.
Location : Sidetrack Bookshop, 325 S. Washington Ave., Royal Oak, MI 48067
Tickets :
-$33.00 - Includes one general admission ticket for event and one copy of Water Finds a Way .
-$5 - Includes one general admission ticket for the event.
Additional copies of Water Finds a Way will be available for purchase at the event (while supplies last). David will be available after the event to sign and personalize books.
Parking in the Center Street Parking Garage located just north of Sidetrack Bookshop with entrances on both Washington and Center Streets is free for the first two hours and costs only 75 cents per hour thereafter, Monday through Saturday.
About Water Finds a Way Might there be a smaller story running like a hidden stream through the second of our nation's two great, storied waves of migration from the rural South to the industrial Midwest? That is the question animating David Hardin's Water Finds a Way . The first wave, in the earliest decades of the twentieth century, saw millions of Black American citizens flee the Jim Crow South, seeking economic opportunity and racial justice. After World War II, a second wave of Southerners, Black and White, came north on a promise of opportunity, a chance to build better lives for their children.
Water Finds a Way is a reflection on the enduring bond between the author and his father, a poor Southern migrant, to Detroit, Michigan, in the middle of the last century. A bond forged in generational suffering, shame, and fear, but annealed in love's timeless persistence. It is the story of two men who long for home, for a sense of belonging, for something lost in the chasm that yawns between them.
About David Hardin
David Hardin is the author of the memoir Standpipe: Delivering Water In Flint, a 2022 Michigan Notable Book. Many of his poems have appeared in online and print literary journals, and he is author of the 2020 poetry collection, Dreaming Bob Wills. His essay "Land, Ho" was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize.