Novelist and critic Alexander Blackburn credits Waters’s novels such as The Man Who Killed the Deer, Pike’s Peak, People of the Valley, and The Woman at Otowi Crossing with creating a worldview that transcends modern materialism and rationalism. Central to Waters’s vision, he suggests, is the individual in whom are concentrated the creative powers of the universe. Having attained higher consciousness, the transformed individual then exemplifies the possibilities of which our minds, operating in society, are capable. Thus Waters's vision of our common humanity in the process of creative enlargement engenders a feeling of hope and sanctuary in the modern age. Blackburn finds parallels not only in Eastern mysticism and ancient Mesoamerican wisdom, but also in modern depth psychology, neuroscience, and post-Einsteinian physics.
