A Mother’s Intuition: A Guest Post by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Crime fiction by and about women, this mother-daughter narrative is satirical, emotional and chilling. It’s packed with layers of meaning and complexities. Read on for an exclusive essay from Our Monthly Pick author Andromeda Romano-Lax on writing The Deepest Lake.
Paperback $18.95
The Deepest Lake
The Deepest Lake
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Paperback $18.95
Includes an exclusive excerpt of What Boys Learn, the forthcoming standalone suspense novel from Andromeda Romano-Lax about a high school guidance counselor’s growing fear that her son may have had a role in the deaths of two teenage girls in a wealthy Chicago suburb.
Includes an exclusive excerpt of What Boys Learn, the forthcoming standalone suspense novel from Andromeda Romano-Lax about a high school guidance counselor’s growing fear that her son may have had a role in the deaths of two teenage girls in a wealthy Chicago suburb.
In literary criticism, it’s considered unwise (and let’s just say it—uncool!) to assume a book was inspired by autobiographical experiences—and I get that. For most of my career, I’ve included only oblique facets of myself in my work. But when it came to creating the character of Rose, a mother who is determined to investigate the circumstances of her daughter’s disappearance, I leaned into my own motherly feelings from the start.
In real life, I have a daughter about the same age as Jules, the daughter in The Deepest Lake. Like Jules, she is a writer and traveler who goes on solo treks in faraway places. We are very close.
The first draft of Deepest Lake was the easiest I’ve ever written, because once I’d set up the situation of a missing daughter, all I had to do was quiet my head and pay more attention to my heart. I channeled my inner Rose, re-reading old texts from Jules in pursuit of clues, revisiting confusing memories, and second-guessing the investigation so far conducted into Jules’s assumed death.
But that was the first draft.
It took time for me to realize I was making the Rose-Jules relationship too problem-free. Didn’t I have conflicts with my college-age child? It was time for more truth, both in life and in my story.
It hadn’t felt psychologically treacherous to write my own offspring into a missing persons story at first, even one that included frightening images of drowning in deep, dark, cold Lake Atitlán. But it did begin to feel unnerving as I added less dramatic details culled from the everyday experience of being a parent.
For example, the times a child seems to be hiding her inner turmoil. Or the times a parent wishes a child would have made better choices. Or the desperate wish to turn back the clock, to have just one more conversation, one more hug, one more chance.
It took me several drafts to realize that when we write (or read) about missing persons, we are actually making peace with the grief that attends all relationships, but especially the ones with our daughters and sons. Our children grow up. They change. They exclude us, because they have to; they can’t become individuated adults, otherwise.
Love is loss, even when there is no crime.
Of course, love is also love.
Before writing The Deepest Lake, I would have told you I didn’t believe in a mother’s intuition or the potential for psychic connection. But writing the novel challenged my rational side. One of my favorite scenes to write was a flashback, during which Rose can feel her daughter’s presence, and Jules can feel Rose, even though they are thousands of miles apart. What mattered to me, as the author, was that it felt true—so true I had to call my own daughter as soon as the scene was finished, just to make sure she was okay.
Andromeda Romano-Lax, previously a writer of historical and speculative fiction, took the plunge into the suspense genre in order to write The Deepest Lake, her sixth novel.