Underlake

By Erin L. McCoy

A richly glittering debut about the interlocked fates of two women, raised worlds apart, who must join forces on an extraordinary journey, diving leagues beneath the water's surface--and straight into the fathomless heart of fear, forgiveness, and love.

"Stunning . . . Underlake reveals the greatest depths are within the human heart." --Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker

"A breathtaking and unforgettable debut about what happens when the water rises and when the water runs out." --Susanna Kwan, author of Awake in the Floating City

"Underlake is a novel of gorgeous, pressurized truth." --Clare Beams, author of The Garden

Twelve years ago, Otta escaped her small town, determined to become a marine biologist. Now she's returned, carrying the guilt of a friend's disappearance during a deep-sea dive and unsure she'll ever be able to dive again. Then a stranger appears at her door.

This stranger, May, says that her daughter has run away, and insists that she's under the nearby lake--alive. To find the missing girl, Otta and May must travel deeper and deeper beneath the water, confronting webs of fear, control, and delusion borne of a rampant nostalgia for a purer world. Along the way, they will also push their bodies to the mortal limit.

Hypnotic and arresting, Underlake brings a poet's attention to language, evoking the ethereal work of Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Groff, and Emily St. John Mandel and the imaginative brio of Margaret Atwood. In taking her place as a major new voice in American fiction, McCoy shrewdly explores the American obsession with inheritance, property, and race, asking how we stake our claim on the timeline of history--and who we erase in the process.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385552076
• ISBN13: 9780385552073
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.3"