Before Christina Schwarz's debut novel Drowning Ruth was even published, director Wes Craven had optioned it. But the book isn't really a work of horror, at least not of the type that Craven commonly creates. Instead, it's something of a ghost story minus the ghosts, a dark tale of how deeply held secrets and regrets can come back to haunt people, even if denial postpones the inevitable for decades. As the novel opens, in 1919, a mentally exhausted Amanda has come home from working in a Milwaukee military hospital, returning to her family's farm to live with her sister Mathilda and niece Ruth. Soon after Mathilda drowns under suspicious circumstances, Amanda's behavior grows even stranger. Stuck in the middle is Ruth, who possesses pieces of the puzzle that contradict her aunt's story but is too young to make sense of what exactly happened that winter night on Nagawaukee Lake. Drowning Ruth begins with a jumble of flashbacks and mixed narratives from different perspectives that continue to change as the characters pass through the years, a strategy confusing enough to obfuscate the facts surrounding Mathilda's death. Halfway through, though, the story evens itself out, and Schwarz switches to more conventional prose. Unfortunately, as the events of that night gradually make themselves clear, the novel itself becomes more conventional, a fine but by no means exceptional psychological dance along the lines of A Map Of The World, The Deep End Of The Ocean, and other Oprah-ready tales of domestic Midwest hell. Once Schwarz abandons her neo-Gothic tropes, the story loses its sense of mystery, plodding instead of propelling itself along to a tidy conclusion that arrives a little too late to resonate.