The Deepest Lake
- Publisher
- Soho Press
- Initial publish date
- May 2024
- Category
- Suspense, Women Sleuths, Contemporary Women
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781641295604
- Publish Date
- May 2024
- List Price
- $35.95
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781641296779
- Publish Date
- Apr 2025
- List Price
- $24.95
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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.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of five novels translated into eleven languages, including The Spanish Bow, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and Annie and the Wolves, selected by Booklist as a Top Ten Historical Novel. Her novels reflect her interest in topics as varied as art acquisition during the Nazi era (The Detour), psychological scandals of the 1920s (Behave), and artificial intelligence and the future of eldercare (Plum Rains). Born in Chicago, she lived in Alaska (where she co-founded 49 Writers), Taiwan, and Mexico before settling on a small island in British Columbia, Canada.
Excerpt: The Deepest Lake (by (author) Andromeda Romano-Lax)
Chapter 1
Rose didn’t count on this. The view itself has stolen her breath. Before she thought, a lake is a lake is a lake. But she was wrong. This is where it happened, and this is why she had to see it firsthand: because you can’t count on others to look past the pretty surfaces of things.
“Gorgeous!” says one of the other women, exiting the shuttle bus just behind her. “Don’t you think?”
Rose doesn’t answer. Her hand has crept to her chest, massaging the tense spot below her collarbone where the ache sits, a hard knot of grief and regret. You can dislike a place even without seeing it. But you can truly despise it only when it’s in front of you, glittering quietly, making a mockery of what you know and even more, what you don’t.
One by one, they all exit the small bus and gather at the bottom of the sloping, sunbaked concrete ramp, alongside a half-rotted wooden dock, united in their confusion about the geography, not sure what will happen next. They’ve been told they’re taking a water taxi to their cabins.
“But why couldn’t the bus have taken us there?” someone asks.
“We must be staying on an island,” another woman guesses.
“Not an island,” explains the twenty-something guide, Ana Sofía, gesturing for all twelve women to come closer. “Villages ring the lake. San Felipe is only a few miles from here, but the road doesn’t go all the way around. It’s easier to hop from village to village by boat or sometimes by tuk-tuk. Anyway, it’s more magical, yes?”
That will be the answer for every inconvenience, Rose thinks. Bad roads, limited internet service and three-wheeled minitaxis are magical. Boat trips and seasickness are magical. Rustic cabins that aren’t conveniently located by the famous writer’s house: more magic. And to figure it all out they will have to stick together, this small group of women, and that, too, will create its own kind of spell. Already, the outside world has begun to drop away, the bonding has started, though Rose remains at the fringes, willing the others to forget about her so she can orient herself to this place and this moment, in her own way.
Near the waterline, an old man is rinsing silver fish the size and shape of salad plates, dragging each one back and forth in the murky water, then dropping them into a white utility bucket. The fishy smell wafts toward Rose. She pulls the brim of her straw sun hat lower, waiting for her stomach to settle from that last hour of hairpin curves.
Across from the boat launch rise two volcanoes, the larger one wreathed in clouds. In front of Rose, Lake Atitlán, the deepest lake in Central America, is calm at this hour. Blue-black silk.
Rose imagines the feeling of that silk, stuffed down her throat. She envisions trying to pull it out, hand over hand, like one of those magicians’ scarves. She feels herself clawing for air, legs thrashing in the black water as the lake’s glittering surface recedes.
The moon was two days past full when her daughter disappeared.
The lake was perfectly calm.
The weather was mild.
It doesn’t matter anymore, Rose’s ex-husband Matt said after the official six-week-long search ended, when Rose was still reading about cases like their daughter’s—horrible stories of backpackers who wandered off the beaten track and were never seen again. Few of the experts they’d hired wanted to say it, but she and Matt could read between the lines. No one seemed to think Jules was still alive. No expert who understood the specifics of her “last seen” location, in deep water far from shore, thought her body would be found.
A week after their last text message from Jules, it had been decided that Rose would stay back in Illinois. Making the most of his military background and comfort dealing with consuls and police, Matt flew to Guatemala and hired private helicopters for an overland search. With the cooperation of local authorities, he formed a separate team to drag Lake Atitlán the old-fashioned way, using lines and hooks. The first odd thing they pulled up, aside from beer bottles and soda cans, was a pair of white gloves. Rose remembers puzzling over the photo, snapped and texted by Matt moments before the police bagged the gloves as evidence. They weren’t gardening gloves, and they weren’t winter gloves, and they weren’t for golf or cycling, much as Matt wanted them to be, because sport gloves were something Jules might have owned.
The question paled in significance when Rose’s phone dinged an hour later. A few hundred feet down the lakeshore, a more important item was found: Jules’s shirt, a pin-striped button-down Roxy cover-up. In response to Matt’s question, Rose texted back with shaking hands: Yes. I’m sure. She was in the bathroom throwing up when he replied with his typical reticence. I thought so too.
That same day, a Canadian retiree made his way to the police substation in San Felipe and filled out the report that Rose would reread every day for a month. The man, one of many North Americans who owned second homes on the shore of Lake Atitlán, had returned to his house one late afternoon in time to see a girl matching Jules’s description swimming dangerously far offshore. He saw her once, treading water, backlit by the sun, which was just minutes away from dipping below the far mountains. He went inside for several minutes, to find a pair of binoculars. When he came back out, there was no girl. He forgot about it until he heard the helicopters and saw search boats amassing, a full week later.
While the boats continued to prowl every inch of Atitlán’s lakeshore, Rose read more about drowning than her therapist would have advised. She learned that gases caused by decomposition force corpses to balloon, allowing them to rise to the surface within days. But if a body sinks to a place that is deep and cold enough, time stops. The body barely decays. The corpse may never surface at all.
Still, the shirt, found not far from the location reported by the Canadian, had given them hope. While Rose remained behind in Evanston, monitoring social media accounts and reading emails and DMs from anyone who might have interacted with Jules during her trip, Matt ramped up the lake-based search. His team turned to scuba and sonar imaging from a motorboat steered by a couple who’d made an art of finding bodies in lakes and reservoirs all across North America. But never deeper than about 170 meters.
Lake Atitlán is 340 meters—deeper than Lake Michigan, back home. A lake that deep can swallow any number of secrets.
Hills searched, lake dragged, town walked end to end by Matt and a private detective, that left one stone unturned, in Rose’s view. Only the local police succeeded in talking to Eva Marshall. Even though Jules claimed to have started working a job for the famous author and writing teacher just before Jules’s disappearance, Eva refused to schedule a visit or even a phone call with Rose or Matt. The only email to which Eva bothered to reply, and then only briefly, referred them back to the official police statement she’d already given. Then: nothing. Rose’s next four emails to Eva went unanswered. The message was clear: stop emailing. But what mother would?
Finally, an admin assistant named Trish replied, informing Rose that Eva was busy running her memoir workshops and wouldn’t be replying personally.
The workshops.
Before she’d even floated the idea to Matt, Rose was already signed up, using the maiden name she hadn’t used in twenty-five years, McKenna, on the application form for the upcoming Lake Atitlán session. She already knew, from googling herself first, that a search of her common name turned up hundreds of women’s images—none of them hers—plus several rose varieties. Someone idly searching wouldn’t make a connection with Jules.
Rose has no ambitions whatsoever as a memoirist, not even the tiniest desire to be published. She’s not a good storyteller and she’s an even worse liar. But you do what you must after you’ve already tried everything else.
Rose has stopped massaging the tight spot below her collarbone. She lets her hand rest there, feeling her heart’s sped-up staccato, trying to will herself into a state of serenity. The closest she can achieve is a tense, purposeful dread.
Near the bottom of the concrete ramp, a cute little girl with ink-black hair approaches the women travelers and tries to sell them woven bracelets by tying them directly to their wrists, accepting payment after the fact. Even the guide gives in and buys one, allowing the precious little fingers to secure the knot. The little girl’s dark eyes flit toward Rose, but she seems to know better than to approach.
At the end of the ramp, Ana Sofía hands out bottles of water, warning the group about the mile-high altitude and the potential for dehydration. When the guide holds a bottle high in the air, shaking it in Rose’s direction, Rose nods without hurrying over. She needs one more moment to take it all in.
Out on the lake now, a small white dot motors toward the women and their pile of luggage, churning the silky waters into froth. Ana Sofía calls Rose and a few other stragglers closer, but before Rose can comply, her seatmate from the bus—a British woman named Pippa—approaches. She puts an arm around Rose’s shoulder. The women are so touchy, as if they’re all friends, already.
“You’ve been quiet. Savoring every moment, are we?”
“Oh—yes.”
“Smart girl. Treat every day as if it could be your last.”
“I do,” Rose says.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for The Deepest Lake
An Amazon Editors' Pick: Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
CrimeReads Best Psychological Thrillers of May
“An incisive critique of our cultural fascination with personal narrative and its concurrent demand that people — and women especially — divulge their deepest secrets for the purpose of voyeuristic entertainment. The plot keeps things moving forward at a brisk clip, but it is the deeper psychological concerns that elevate the novel.”
—Toronto Star
“As a seasoned novelist, Romano-Lax takes readers into Rose’s point of view and also that of her daughter, Jules, to get to the bottom of this great mystery, which is as deep as the lake where Jules presumably drowned.”
—Observer
“With The Deepest Lake, Andromeda Romano-Lax has crafted an unpredictable, juicy, and scandalizing thriller set in Central America; it is exactly the kind of novel that will cause you to miss your bus stop.”
—The British Columbia Review
“A piercing look at obsession and grief and a vivid portrayal of the Guatemalan landscape and the sometimes-toxic culture created by charismatic leaders.”
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
“The Deepest Lake is a mesmerizing, twisty page-turner combined with a complex mother-daughter family drama. Andromeda Romano-Lax’s insightful interrogation of the confessional memoir culture and the nature of obsession will stay with you long after the novel’s last nail-biting pages. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Miracle Creek
“Celeste Ng meets Lisa Jewell in this mesmerizing story about a writing retreat that’s as inspiring as it is insular, as alluring as it is alarming—and the mother and daughter who risk their lives to uncover the dark secrets of its leader. Chillingly atmospheric and filled with disturbing twists, The Deepest Lake will have you glued to its pages until its surprising and satisfying conclusion.”
—Megan Collins, author of Thicker Than Water and The Family Plot
“A richly evocative and suspenseful read that plumbs the depths of grief, motherhood, and the endless hunger to tell our stories—with page-turning twists you won't see coming. Hold your breath and dive in.”
—Amy Gentry, bestselling author of Good as Gone
“Atmospheric, psychological, and surprising, The Deepest Lake mines the depths of mother-daughter relationships and the risks we take in the name of creativity. With humor and lush language, Andromeda Romano-Lax has created a taut suspense story . . . I finished this book wanting to call my mom and tell her how much I loved her.”
—Caitlin Wahrer, author of Edgar Award finalist The Damage
“At a reclusive writing retreat led by a charismatic memoirist, a mother searches for clues into her daughter’s death. From the adrenaline-spiked first words, The Deepest Lake pulls you under. What follows are twists and turns that can only be unraveled through the stories these characters tell themselves about who they are and who they want to be. Asking provocative questions about motherhood, truth, and what we’ll do to ensure our own survival, The Deepest Lake is one of the most suspenseful, thought-provoking novels of the year.”
—Erin Flanagan, Edgar-winning author of Come With Me
“A scintillating psychological thriller with deeply woven characters and a jaw-dropping twist. I absolutely loved it.”
—Cate Quinn, bestselling author of The Clinic
“The best thriller I've read in years! At once a heart-pounding mystery and a profound take on the dangers of our confessional age. I loved it.”
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
“Pulls you into its depths from page one . . . A tense and compelling story of the bonds between women as profound as the lake at its heart.”
—Melissa Adelman, author of What the Neighbors Saw
“Immersive, atmospheric, and beautifully rendered, The Deepest Lake weaves the stories of a missing daughter and a mother driven to uncover the truth into a suspenseful, can’t-miss thriller.”
—Laura McHugh, award-winning author of What's Done in Darkness
“Welcome to the memoir workshop from hell. In dual timelines, a young writer looks for creative inspiration in a dangerous paradise and a mother searches for answers about her daughter's last days. I relished this insider's look at the glittering, intimate, and sometimes toxic world of writing retreats. The Deepest Lake is a gripping yet thoughtful novel about overcoming trauma, meeting our inheritance, and what happens when we seize the power to rewrite our own stories.”
—Alison B. Hart, author of The Work Wife
“With The Deepest Lake, Andromeda Romano-Lax has crafted a suspense novel rich in emotional insight. This gripping story, set against a captivating landscape filled with unraveling secrets, is an exploration of the depths we travel and the shadowy places we confront along the way.”
—Maggie Downs, author of Braver Than You Think
“All who enjoy writer-focused thrillers will be enthralled by Romano-Lax’s morally and intellectually intricate tale, while her fans will marvel at her versatility as she shifts from complexly imagined literary fiction like Annie and the Wolves (2021), to this psychologically and culturally spiky work of suspense.”
—Booklist
“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.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Electrifying . . . In the harrowing thriller The Deepest Lake, a strained but powerful mother-daughter bond may be the only force strong enough to defeat an opportunistic writer’s dark schemes.”
—Foreword Reviews
Praise for Andromeda Romano-Lax
“Riveting.”
—People
“Will keep you mesmerized to the last page.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“Shocking and thought-provoking . . . The intimate struggles of a woman weighing her value, utility, and satisfaction both within and outside the home certainly resonate today.”
—The Boston Globe
“On its most powerful level, the book is a hyperactive psychological thriller, exploring the enduring damage done by childhood trauma and the need to mine and process it to become healthy, and the various ways in which victims do so . . . A highly imaginative and compelling read.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“An engaging read which will not only entertain you but also teach you a great deal about these giants in the history of psychology, and the ethics of those times, which we now see as abhorrent.”
—Psychology Today
“When this story grabs hold of you, and it will, there will be no setting it down until you’ve finished the last page. A morally complex, genre-shattering thriller.”
—Eowyn Ivey, New York Times bestselling author of To the Bright Edge of the World
“Romano-Lax’s brilliantly conceived characters, delicate exploration of abuse and childhood trauma, and examination of vengeance and its power to heal will entrance from the very first page. Her latest is a tour de force that will appeal to a wide variety of readers.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review
“Daring and imaginative Romano-Lax puts another provocative spin on historical fiction as she has both Ruth McClintock, a struggling small-town Minnesota historian, and her obsession, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, take turns narrating in this highly original time-warping tale . . . As she illuminates Oakley’s extraordinary life, Romano-Lax conjures supernatural dimensions in pursuit of psychological revelations, grapples with the sexual predation of ‘wolves’ and the muzzle of shame, and dramatizes the slipperiness of memory and history, creating a compassionate, heady, and witty whirl of fact and insight, mesmerizing characters and suspenseful predicaments.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
