It is a roman à clef based on the Chappaquiddick incident, in which U.S. senator Ted Kennedy crashed a car and caused the death by drowning of passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.

The reader learns of the events that led up to the accident in flashbacks as the protagonist is drowning: Kelly Kelleher attends a Fourth of July party hosted by her friend Buffy St. John and her lover, Ray Annick.

In reality, The Senator has stumbled to an outdoor phone booth, carefully staying out of sight of passing cars, to call Ray Annick.

She also repeatedly imagines her parents, and how she will explain to them that she is a "good girl" and argues that The Senator and his wife are separated, his children grown, and that their affair is causing no harm.

Republican presidents George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan are both castigated in the narrative,[2] while Bobby Kennedy and the Vietnam War are referred to as representing the cushy Democratic era.

In a New York Times interview, Oates said she began making notes for "a novel" in 1969, after she felt "a horrified fascination and sympathy" for the victim, who was in the car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy.

The Rocky Mountain News, The Times, and Entertainment Weekly have all listed Black Water as one of Joyce Carol Oates's best books.

[9] That same year, the composer Jeremy Beck also wrote to Oates, requesting permission to adapt Black Water into a monodrama for soprano and piano.

Oates gave Beck permission to do so, indicating that she herself was creating a libretto for the Duffy project, but noting that their respective approaches would result in very different operatic works.