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 the small town of Steels, intent upon becoming a marine biologist. Now she’s returned having failed to achieve her dream, and carrying the guilt of a friend’s death during a deep-sea dive. She thinks she may never dive again, but then a stranger appears at her door.
This stranger, May, says that her daughter has run away, and insists that she’s under a nearby lake — alive.
Because it turns out the small-town legend of “the underlake” is true: three decades ago, an entire valley and the town in it was flooded to make way for a dam, but the people in that town refused to leave.
Now, they’re still living beneath the lake, self-proclaimed “refugees of a world obsessed with change,” connected –and held apart –by an intricate, airtight system of tubes and sealed buildings. To find May’s missing daughter, Otta and May must travel deeper and deeper under the water. Along the way, they’ll discover communities that have lived in isolation for decades, fomenting extremes of delusion and nostalgia. As the two women bond in the thrall of their search, they are each forced to confront the layers of fear, control, and uncertainty that drive their quest. Together and alone, they must challenge the laws of love and society –and push their bodies to the mortal limit.
Hypnotic and arresting, Underlake asks how do we claim our place on the great timeline of history, and who do we erase in the process? It brings a poet’s attention to language, gesturing at the evocative and ethereal work of Preeta Samarasan and Marilynne Robinson, while also shrewdly exploring the American obsession with inheritance, property, and race. Finally, Underlake is a powerful meditation on what is possible when women reach through time, space, and memory to relate to one another.
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