The House of Deep Water

Jeni McFarland

Apr 2020 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

Perfect for fans of The Mothers and Olive Kitteridge, in this stunning and perceptive debut novel three women learn what it means to come home--and to make peace with the family, love affairs, and memories they'd once left behind.

"Here are voices from the heartland rendered real, raw, and aching. . . . Reminiscent of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, this novel announces Jeni McFarland as a writer of our generation." --Aja Gabel, author of The Ensemble

River Bend, Michigan, is the kind of small town most can't imagine leaving, but three women couldn't wait to escape. When each must return--Linda Williams, never sure what she wants; her mother, Paula, always too sure; and Beth DeWitt, one of River Bend's only black daughters, now a mother of two who'd planned to raise her own children anywhere else--their paths collide under Beth's father's roof. As one town struggles to contain all of their love affairs and secrets, a local scandal forces Beth to confront her own devastating past.

Filled with the voices of mothers and daughters, husbands, lovers, and fathers, The House of Deep Water explores motherhood, trauma, love, loss, and new beginnings found in a most unlikely place: home.

About the author

Jeni McFarland holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Houston, where she was a fiction editor at Gulf Coast Magazine. She's an alum of Tin House, a 2016 Kimbilio Fellow, and has had short fiction published in Crack the Spine, Forge, and Spry, which nominated her for the storySouth Million Writers Award. She was also a finalist for the 2015 Gertrude Stein Writers Award in Fiction from the Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has lived in Michigan and the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two cats. The House of Deep Water is her first book.