Erin L. McCoy discusses Underlake with Kelly E. Hill

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.
“Stunning . . . Achingly true to the human need for hope and forgiveness, Underlake reveals the greatest depths are within the human heart.” —Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker
“Eerie and mesmerizing . . . A journey into the deepest recesses of American society . . . A breathtaking and unforgettable debut about what happens when the water rises and when the water runs out.” —Susanna Kwan, author of Awake in the Floating City
“Underlake is a novel of gorgeous, pressurized truth. . . . There are images here I know I will never forget as long as I live.” —Clare Beams, author of The Garden
Twelve 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 beneath the water, confronting webs of fear, control, and delusion borne of a rampant nostalgia for a purer world. Along the way, they will 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.

Erin L. McCoy is the author of the poetry collection Wrecks, a finalist for the Noemi Press Book Award. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Narrative, Conjunctions, Bennington Review, The American Poetry Review, and Best New Poets, among other publications. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Erin has lived in Seattle, Malaysia, Spain, and two St. Petersburgs.

Kelly Hill holds an MFA in Fiction from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing and a PhD in Humanities from UofL. Her historical novel A Home for Friendless Women was published by Vintage / Penguin Random House in 2024; her linked short story collection Just Don't Ask Us What We Do All Day will follow from the publisher in April 2027

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