Underlake: A Novel

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.

Thirteen 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 under 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.