The Deepest Lake

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. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary. (May)