The Deepest Lake

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.

Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of five novels translated into 11 languages, including The Spanish Bow, A NYT Editors’ Choice, and Annie and the Wolves (2021), 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.