Roxane Gay lives and writes in the Midwest. She is the author of “Ayiti,” “An Untamed State,” and “Bad Feminist,” a New York Times bestseller. “The Way of the River” is Gay’s contribution to After Water, a WBEZ Chicago flash fiction project that invites writers to examine the impact of climate change on future generations around the Great Lakes. In this story, a wife and mother pushes against despair and thirst to keep her humanity, and her family together.