What the Deep Water Knows: Poems

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace, a Reese’s Book Club Pick, comes a debut poetry collection that paints a moving portrait of a rich life from childhood to love to marriage to motherhood to divorce and beyond. “Breathtaking . . . will change the way you see the world.” —Daisy Goodwin, author of The American Heiress If I could fly backward, I would.

To the safety of branches, to the time

when my heart still raced for you,

twelve hundred beats a minute. In poetry that is at once bold and lyrical, affecting and devastatingly frank, Miranda Cowley Heller takes us through childhood, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. Suffused with the natural world and the landscape of Cape Cod, where many of the poems are set, What the Deep Water Knows contemplates love in all the seasons.

About the Author

Miranda Cowley Heller was raised in New York City and Cape Cod. Her debut novel The Paper Palace was a number one New York Times bestseller in the US, a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. She has worked as senior vice president and head of drama series at HBO, developing and overseeing such shows as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Deadwood, and Big Love, among others. This is her first collection of poetry.