The Deepest Lake
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In this atmospheric thriller set at a luxury memoir-writing workshop on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, a grieving mother goes undercover to investigate her daughter’s mysterious death.
Rose, the mother of twentysomething aspiring writer Jules, has waited three months for answers about her daughter’s death. Why was she swimming alone when she feared the water? Why did she stop texting days before she was last seen?
When the official investigation rules the death an accidental drowning, the body possibly lost forever in Central America’s deepest lake, an unsatisfied Rose travels to the memoir workshop herself. She hopes to draw her own conclusion—and find closure. When Rose arrives, she is swept into the curious world created by her daughter’s literary hero, the famous writing teacher Eva Marshall, a charismatic woman known for her candid—and controversial—memoirs. As Rose uncovers details about the days leading up to Jules’s disappearance, she begins to suspect that this glamorous retreat package is hiding ugly truths. Is Lake Atitlán a place where traumatized women come to heal or a place where deeper injury is inflicted?
The Deepest Lake is both a sharp look at the sometimes toxic, exclusionary world of high-class writing workshops and an achingly poignant view of a mother’s grief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman seeks answers about her daughter's disappearance at an exclusive writers workshop in the hair-raising latest from Romano-Lax (Annie and the Wolves). The last time Rose and her ex-husband, Matt, heard from their daughter, Jules, was three months ago, when she interrupted her trek through Central America to help controversial memoirist Eva Marshall run a writing workshop at her home on Guatemala's Lake Atitlán. Jules's final texts to her parents came on her 23rd birthday; a few days later, a Canadian expat saw a woman matching Jules's description swim far out in the lake. Rose, unsatisfied with the official conclusion that Jules drowned and her body sank to the bottom of the legendarily deep Atitlán, signs up for one of Eva's workshops under her maiden name in order to conduct her own investigation. As Rose uncovers evidence of Eva's financial improprieties, Romano-Lax shuffles in chapters from Jules's perspective that paint an increasingly harrowing portrait of Eva's workshops and the desperate characters she invites to attend. The suspenseful narrative is hardly short on surprises, but it's the sharp characterizations that make this stand out. Romano-Lax delivers a chilling look at maternal grief and the lengths people will go to tell their own stories.
