> Skip to content
[]
Play sample
  • Published: 23 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780525542360
  • Imprint: Putnam
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $55.00

The House of Deep Water




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--in this stunning and perceptive debut novel.

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.

Uniting the voices of mothers and daughters, husbands, lovers, and fathers, this unforgettable debut novel offers both a compulsively readable family story and a riveting portrait of small-town America today. With wisdom, humor, and exceptional heart, The House of Deep Water explores motherhood, trauma, love, loss, and new beginnings found in that most unlikely place: home.

  • Published: 23 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780525542360
  • Imprint: Putnam
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $55.00

About the author

Jeni McFarland

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.

Praise for The House of Deep Water

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

"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." --Booklist