Critical Praise

"[A] rich, moving and altogether stunning first novel... Readers...will find this compelling and heartbreaking story -- sure to be compared with The Good Mother -- impossible to put down."

——Publishers Weekly, starred boxed review

"Riveting.... Mitchard keeps her compassionate eye focused... [as she] examines love and loss, and what it means to be a family."

——Glamour

"A first-rate new storyteller."

——Newsweek

"So well observed and perceptive it's hard to shy away from... masterfully paced... A story... of one family's slow tumble back into light."

——Los Angeles Times

"Mitchard delivers a drama that has the tension of a thriller but moves more deeply into the emotional territory of family ties."

——People

"A beautifully timed, wrenchingly told story of a family's worst nightmare... has the pace of a thriller with the emotional wallop of August and Endless Love."

——The Boston Sunday Globe

"The Deep End of the Ocean burns itself into the memory line by line. It is by turns lyrical and startling, brilliant."

——Kaye Gibbons