What the Deep Water Knows - by Miranda Cowley Heller

Book Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace, a Reese's Book Club Pick, comes a debut poetry collection that paints a moving portrait of a rich life from childhood to love to marriage to motherhood to divorce and beyond.

"Breathtaking . . . will change the way you see the world." --Daisy Goodwin, author of The American Heiress

If I could fly backward, I would.
To the safety of branches, to the time
when my heart still raced for you,
twelve hundred beats a minute.

In poetry that is at once bold and lyrical, affecting and devastatingly frank, Miranda Cowley Heller takes us through childhood, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. Suffused with the natural world and the landscape of Cape Cod, where many of the poems are set, What the Deep Water Knows contemplates love in all the seasons.

Review Quotes

"A breathtaking collection. These poems map a woman's life with extraordinary precision and skill. Heartbreaking, funny, poignant, hopeful . . . this is poetry you didn't know you needed but will change the way you see the world."
--Daisy Goodwin, author of The American Heiress

"Raw and intimate . . . full of female life--a note scribbled to a son, a hummingbird in the garden, a lover walking away. Surprising and captivating."
--Jenny Jackson, author of Pineapple Street

"How I loved this. A collection of poems that manages to capture a woman's life in its entirety with all its joy, mystery, and harsh, unexpected endings. What the Deep Water Knows broke my heart and healed it too. Fans of The Paper Palace will adore it."
--Clare Leslie Hall, author of Broken Country

"Miranda's poems are living, breathing words that are raw, honest, and thought-provoking. Reading this collection felt like a key turning a tiny hidden lock within. Her poems are brilliant and intentional, you will no doubt come back to these pages time and time again."
--Jessica Urlichs, author of Beautiful Chaos

"Takes you on a shiningly intimate journey . . . Silken and barbed all at once."
--Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep

"A life told in astonishing, unerring verses. The early poems are beautifully opaque, stones glimpsed in cloudy water. Lyrical, brutal, devastating, visionary--through verse a woman's life emerges, gathers itself, is dismantled, and settles again. These stories are as precise and arresting as icy water."
--Sonya Walger, author of Lion

"These poems of confession and witness also carry a keen appreciation of the natural world, the ability to find lessons in small moments, and insight that unfolds with time."
--Booklist

Praise for The Paper Palace

"Filled with secrets, love, lies and a summer beach house. What more could you ask?"
--Parade

"A deeply emotional love story . . . the unraveling of secrets, lies and a very complex love triangle."
--Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club July '21 Pick)

"Nail-biting."
--Town & Country

"A magnificent page-turner."
--Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author

"[An] irresistible placement of a complicated family in a bewitching place."
--The New York Times

"A captivating debut . . . full of lush, atmospheric details. This will keep the reader guessing all the way to the end."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Miranda Cowley Heller was raised in New York City and Cape Cod. Her debut novel The Paper Palace was a number one New York Times bestseller in the US, a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, and was longlisted for the Women's Prize. She has worked as senior vice president and head of drama series at HBO, developing and overseeing such shows as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Deadwood, and Big Love, among others. This is her first collection of poetry.