UNDERCOVER and The Drowning Girl

Undercover, my first novel for young adults, stars, among other things, an overgrown and abandoned estate pond that becomes a second home of sorts to a poet-in-training named Elisa. She finds her best similes by the water's edge. She teaches herself to skate on its surface, come winter.

Sunk deep into that pond is a mysterious statue, a figure Elisa begins to call The Drowning Girl, which is how I always referred to this gorgeous creature when I stood by her side at Chanticleer garden. I wrote of her in my memoir, Ghosts in the Garden. She returned to me again (as a muse) when I was writing the mystery-romance that will appear next June, Nothing but Ghosts. She was there, in my heart, the entire time I was writing Elisa's story—this always youthful, always silent underwater (I need this word) sylph.

I go to Chanticleer as often as my schedule allows, which this year (sadly) has been not nearly enough. I go for the surprise of new blooms and unexpected edges, the float of flowers on a water's cool skin. Always I take my camera. Sometimes, if the sun is right, I can capture a portrait of The Drowning Girl, and bring her home with me.

Yesterday the sun was right. I'd never seen her quite so clearly.