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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English

THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER

Jeni McFarland

At once big-hearted, searing, and insightful, THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER is a moving debut novel about three women and one small town transformed by trauma, love, loss, and a new understanding of what we all owe to our shared past.
River Bend, Michigan, isn't a destination of any sort - there are those who couldn't imagine leaving, and those who can't seem to get out. But when a scandal rocks the sleepy town and three women return home, secrets that have long been buried begin to rise.

Linda Williams isn't quite sure what she wants, but as she comes back to River Bend, she knows it wasn't the suburban Texas life she shared with her former husband.

Linda's mother, Paula, does know what she wants: Paula wants out of River Bend for good, but she'll need to stick around town a while to formalize a divorce from her long-estranged husband to do it.

And Beth DeWitt Hansen, a newly single mother and one of the only black women to grow up in River Bend, arrives back at her father's house with her two teenaged children, hopeful that she'll find her feet again, even as her return stirs up dark and haunting memories.

To find a way forward, all three women must contend with River Bend's complicated past.

A small-town story simmering with longing, anger, and fierce pride, and punctuated with a heartbreaking series of coming-of-age vignettes, THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER is a powerfully written novel told through the voices of mothers and daughters, of husbands, lovers, and fathers, about how the stories we tell ourselves shape who we are - and who it is we can still become.

Jeni McFarland holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Houston, where she was a fiction editor at Gulf Coast Magazine. She is an alum of Tin House and a 2016 Kimbilio Fellow and has had short fiction published in Crack the Spine, Forge, and Spry. She is the recipient of the storySouth Million Writers Award and was a finalist for the 2015 Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction from the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review. She lives in San Francisco.
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Published 2020-04-21 by Putnam

Comments

Unflinchingly examines the agonizing links of history and fate and love that inextricably bind the families of River Bend. There is abundant beauty present in the rendering of the darkness in these lives, and also, ultimately, in its presentation of moments of redeeming grace. This novel is a stunner.

...The House of Deep Water tells the story of three women who chose to escape - and now are forced to return and confront scandal. Motherhood, trauma, race, love, and loss are all very present here. Read more...

[A] fine debut... Handled with realistic nuance. McFarland's layered tale will appeal to readers who liked Tayari Jones's An American Marriage. Read more...

Just like life, McFarland's debut is big, messy, and complicated while also being a completely engrossing portrait of her characters and their hometown. She deftly weaves in issues of race and consent. Perfect for those who like books about family dysfunction. Read more...

Creates a place so real it feels like you can step into it, populated by characters so alive you can almost hear them breathing. McFarland's powerful debut is a brilliant exploration of home and heartbreak, and how we live with both of them.

THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER is one of... Salon's Recommended Reading Picks for April PopSugar's 25 Best New Books Coming Out in April 2020 BookRiot's 10 Books to Read If You Like Little Fires Everywhere

The House of Deep Water uses a town built on Midwestern stoicism to take a deep look at family dynamics and the ties that bind.

A nuanced, realistic portrait of small-town America, brimming with secrets and scandal. Read more...

A poetic hum underpins this intergenerational tale that slowly tangles the residents in relationships that draw people back to small towns, and drive them away. The House of Deep Water is unflinchingly honest.

You think a novel can't possibly do it all, and then you read The House of Deep Water. Here are voices from the heartland--outsiders and deserters, mothers and fathers, newly born and newly dead--rendered real, raw, and aching. Daringly told and dizzingly capable, these voices are finely braided into the most American of stories, that of the impossibility and inevitability of returning home. To say this novel redefines what it means to be a family is an understatement; this novel is a family, veering past and present, stitching the shipwrecked and the wanderers into a beautiful, irregular tapestry. Reminiscent of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, this novel announces Jeni McFarland as a writer of our generation.

This book is full of all the things that can't be admitted and must be said about women and race in America. Reading Jeni McFarland's gorgeous prose felt like listening to the most private moments in the lives of these women, around a kitchen table in heartland America.

Jeni McFarland writes nuanced, layered relationships in her absorbing debut about three women who return to the small town of their childhoods and grapple with family, race, class and the expectations of womanhood. Read more...

McFarland knows her way through the murk... The flood hinted at in the title arrives and delivers. So, in the end, does the story. A matriarchal tale asks who can thrive in small-town America. Read more...

A Midwestern Gothic... It's about women building new lives against the currents of racism, class and gender inequality. It's about how relatives can know each other better than anyone else and still remain strangers. McFarland's prose churns spiraling waves of quiet tension that roar to brilliant and deeply affecting breaks.

Beautifully crafted, deeply moving, this timely debut novel is a masterful exploration of class, race and what it means to be a woman. McFarland has written that rare novel: a compelling page turner that has you savoring every sentence.

What a resounding symphony of voices! I knew and loved these people like family - flaws and all - by the final page. A rare novel that reveals human folly and restores hope at the same time.

A sensitive and aching meditation on reluctant homecomings, complicated families, and past selves. Poetic and yet unflinchingly told, this book does not provide clean absolution; rather, as Linda, Paula, and Beth confront the town and community that have shaped them, their weaving narratives mirror the messy contours of our real lives.