Troubled Waters weaves together climate crisis and family history as a granddaughter and grandmother come to terms with what it means to be Black women in a world on fire. Mary Annaïse Heglar, a climate essayist whose work has appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic, combines memoir with environmental writing in a genre-defying work. The book explores Gulf Coast communities already experiencing climate impacts—intensifying hurricanes, coastal erosion, extreme heat—while connecting these present dangers to the long history of environmental injustice facing Black communities. Heglar traces her family's roots in the South and their experiences of environmental harm, from industrial pollution to natural disasters whose impacts are never evenly distributed. The grandmother's voice provides historical depth, connecting contemporary crisis to earlier struggles and survivals. Heglar refuses both despair and false optimism, insisting that climate action must be grounded in the experiences of frontline communities rather than abstract global thinking. For readers seeking environmental writing that centers justice and draws on traditions of Black survival, Heglar offers a distinctive and powerful voice in the climate conversation.