UNDERLAKE

When the Paintsville Dam was completed in 1979, 240 people drowned in the lake created behind it—except they actually didn’t.

That’s the premise of McCoy’s overstuffed first novel, which submerges a compelling cast of characters in more plot than the author can handle. In the dam-adjacent town of Steels, locals still ostracize Eugenia Coates for stealing money and giving it to people who thought they could fortify their houses and live underwater. Her daughter Otta, who fled Steels to become a marine biologist, has returned broke and crushed by guilt over the death of her diving partner. She’s furious with Eugenia for making her and sister Allie town outcasts, but she’s here to deal with their mother’s kidney disease and falling-down house. When the local handyman/physics teacher promises to fix their decaying roof in return for diving lessons for a friend, Otta meets May, who insists her daughter is “Under” and she needs to dive to find her. We quickly learn that May isn’t delusional; she’s fled from the Chimneys, a bizarre religious community under the lake that believes no one above ground survived. (The engineering that made the community’s survival possible is eventually explained, sort of.) May’s recollections paint a compelling picture of an abusive theocracy, and the fact that she too was ostracized (her mother was unmarried) creates a bond with Otta. Thus far, McCoy has created a fruitful world for exploration, with two intriguing protagonists and several promising themes for development. But the introduction of several additional plotlines comes at the expense of narrative clarity, and there’s way too much going on in the final chapters for readers to make sense of. A jarringly inconclusive conclusion fortifies the impression of a writer not entirely in control of her material. That said, the talented McCoy offers a lot to think about and some moving mother-daughter scenes.

An ambitious if flawed effort worth the attention of serious fiction readers.