Girl Underwater

Girl Underwater is a novel by the American writer Claire Kells, published in 2015. It is her first novel, and it alternates between a disaster in the mountains and the months of recovery that follow it.

Avery Delacorte is a sophomore on her university's nationally ranked swimming team and is struggling under the weight of the expectations that come with it. Her life changes when the red-eye flight taking her home for Thanksgiving goes down in a mountain lake in the Colorado Rockies.

She is one of only five survivors. The others include three small boys and her teammate Colin Shea, and with sub-zero temperatures, minimal supplies and no sign of help, the two of them have to depend on each other in ways they could not have imagined a day earlier. The novel cuts between those days in the wilderness and her recovery afterwards, supported by two men who love her, only one of whom knows what really happened before the rescue, and the two timelines meet only when the reader is ready for them to.