They Drown Our Daughters

Reading They Drown our Daughters as part of your next book club? Our free discussion guide is the perfect companion to the book, and will help you get the most out of your event. Included are discussion points and questions that will help guide you through this book. Download the guide now!

"The best kind of story—one that will both break your heart and scare the hell out of you." —Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Children on the Hill

If you can hear the call of the water,

It’s already far too late.

They say Cape Disappointment is haunted. That's why tourists used to flock there in droves. They'd visit the rocky shoreline under the old lighthouse's watchful eye and fish shells from the water as they pretended to spot dark shapes in the surf. Now the tourists are long gone, and when Meredith Strand and her young daughter return to Meredith’s childhood home after an acrimonious split from her wife, the Cape seems more haunted by regret than any malevolent force.

But her mother, suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, is convinced the ghost stories are real. Not only is there something in the water, but it's watching them. Waiting for them. Reaching out to Meredith's daughter the way it has to every woman in their line for generations—and if Meredith isn’t careful, all three women, bound by blood and heartbreak, will be lost one by one to the ocean’s mournful call.

Part queer modern gothic, part ghost story, They Drown Our Daughters explores the depths of motherhood, identity, and the lengths a woman will go to hold on to both.