The Drowning Woman

Lee Gulliver has lost almost everything. Once a restaurateur, she's now buried in debt and living out of her car on the edges of Seattle, doing whatever it takes to stay invisible. Then, one gray morning by the water, she watches a well-dressed woman walk deliberately into the sea—and she can't stop herself from wading in to save her.

The woman, Hazel, isn't grateful. She's furious, because she wanted to die: she's trapped in a lavish, controlling marriage that has curdled into something dangerous. An unlikely friendship forms between the two women, one with nothing and one with everything, until Hazel makes a startling request—she wants Lee to help her disappear for good. But as the plan takes shape, Lee begins to realize that nothing about Hazel, her marriage, or the escape is what it seems.

Robyn Harding's The Drowning Woman is a twisty domestic thriller about desperation, reinvention, and the lies people tell to survive. As alliances shift and secrets surface, it becomes impossible to tell who is rescuing whom.