The Drowning Woman

The Drowning Woman (2003) is Canadian novelist Robyn Harding’s 12th novel. Harding has written numerous domestic suspense novels that focus on themes such as the complexities of female friendship. A dual point-of-view novel, The Drowning Woman has sections that alternate between the first-person perspectives of Lee Gulliver, a former restaurant owner who is now living in her Toyota Corolla, and Hazel Laval, who is trapped in an abusive marriage to a wealthy and powerful husband. The novel takes place in Seattle and includes diverse settings that show the economic divergences present in the city. The story explores themes related to preconceptions versus experience, the insignificance of class distinctions, the importance of friendship, and the power dynamics within toxic relationships.

This guide refers to the 2023 Grand Central Publishing edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss suicide and suicidal ideation, depression and panic attacks, intimate partner violence and abuse, murder, and death.

Plot Summary

Former chef Lee Gulliver lives in her car in Seattle after the New York City restaurant she owned went bankrupt during COVID-19. One of her investors, a gangster, broke her finger with a meat mallet and threatened to continue doing so on a weekly basis until he was paid. She fled to Seattle and got a job in a sketchy diner known for hiring staff with criminal backgrounds. She’s estranged from her family because she caught her sister’s fiancé cheating but attempted to extort him for money rather than telling her sister.

The novel’s first section is told from Lee’s first-person perspective. As the novel opens, two men break the window of the Toyota Corolla she lives in and steal her purse. More important than the phone and identifying documents that she has lost, the break-in means that she has lost her security. While she waits for her next paycheck so that she can afford to repair the window, she decides to drive to an affluent neighborhood to park by a beach where she’ll be safer. One morning, she sees a crying woman walk into the water. Lee saves her.

The drowning woman is Hazel Laval, who is married to the sadistic Benjamin Laval, a criminal defense lawyer who emotionally and physically abuses her. Hazel is furious when Lee foils her apparent death by suicide. However, the novel later reveals that Hazel planned for her lover, Jesse Thomas, to pick her up by boat once she entered the water as part of an attempt to escape from her life with Benjamin. Lee meets Jesse, not knowing his connection to Hazel, and they begin a sexual relationship.

Lee and Hazel form an unlikely friendship, meeting on the beach and sharing details of their lives with each other. Hazel asks for help to escape her abusive marriage, and Lee agrees. Hazel tells Lee that she’s planning to acquire a fake passport on the dark web and offers to get one for Lee as well. She plans to use a trip to the gym (one of the few places where her husband allows her to go) to escape to the airport and fly to Panama. Lee and Hazel look similar, so Hazel suggests that they switch clothes in the gym locker room. Then, Lee will drive Hazel’s car to their mansion and go inside to fool the cameras that Benjamin uses to watch Hazel. This will give Hazel a head start.

The novel later reveals that the real plan, which Hazel and Jesse concocted, is to kill Benjamin and frame Lee for the murder so that Hazel and Jesse can keep Benjamin’s home and money rather than fleeing. Unaware of the real plan, Lee goes to Hazel and Benjamin’s mansion dressed as her friend. There, she finds Jesse dead in Benjamin’s study; he has been stabbed.

In Part 2, the narrative shifts to Hazel’s first-person perspective. She reflects on meeting Benjamin, having ignored a friend’s warnings that he was into dark, “kinky […] stuff.” What began as a consensual “BDSM” relationship quickly devolved into abuse, and Benjamin began controlling every aspect of Hazel’s life. An important part of why Hazel stays with Benjamin is his promise to pay for the care of her mother (who developed early-onset Alzheimer’s) while they’re married. Hazel recalls meeting Jesse and beginning an affair. They developed a plan for Hazel to escape via her apparent death by suicide (drowning) and then flying to Panama.

However, when Lee foils that plan by rescuing Hazel, Jesse suggests a new plan. He’ll get close to Lee, and then he can kill Benjamin and frame Lee for the murder so that he and Hazel can live in luxury rather than fleeing. Hazel is hesitant but wants to please Jesse and initially goes along with the plan. She steals the knife that Lee uses for self-protection from her car. However, instead of stashing it in her laundry room for Jesse to use as a murder weapon as planned, Hazel throws it into the ocean. She got Lee a fake passport and leaves it with $50,000 and a plane ticket to Panama in a drawer in the kitchen so that her friend can use it to escape. Hazel proceeds with the plan, switching clothes with Lee at the gym. She drives around aimlessly, thinking that she’ll either attempt to escape later or die by suicide. When she returns home, Benjamin is waiting for her.

Part 3 returns to Lee’s perspective. With the fake passport and money, she knows that she can escape but is too curious about Jesse’s death. She searches his apartment and finds a social security card that lists the name Carter Sumner. Via an internet search, she finds an article about two brothers, Carter and Sean, who were arrested for a violent home invasion. She recognizes Jesse in the photo that accompanies the article and realizes that his real name is Carter. She finds Sean, who is living in a halfway house, and goes to talk to him. He tells her that Carter loved violence but that his defense in court was that his brother pulled him into criminality, so Sean served much more time for their crime than Carter did. Sean tells Lee that the person he hates even more than his brother is Carter’s lawyer, who convinced him to use that defense: Benjamin Laval.

Benjamin calls Lee, and she agrees to meet him. He tells her about Hazel and Jesse’s plan to implicate her in the murder and that he needs her to keep quiet about everything. He says that he has a friend in Austin who will hire her as a sous chef and gives her a plane ticket to Texas and $25,000 in exchange for promising not to say anything. She worries about what he’ll do to Hazel and can’t decide whether to fly to Panama or Texas. She goes to an internet café to research her options and finds a USB drive in a pen she took from Jesse’s apartment. She listens to two audio recordings of Carter and another person, which she realizes he must have been keeping for insurance. The content of the recordings (Benjamin hiring Carter to murder Hazel) isn’t revealed until later in the novel.

Part 4 is from Hazel’s perspective. She remembers Benjamin punishing her for her affair with Jesse and the escape attempt. Feigning regret, she’s eventually allowed to leave the house to visit her mother. When she returns home, she plans to take sleeping pills with vodka and die in the bathtub. However, a detective arrives and tells her that Benjamin is being arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. She later learns that Lee took the audio files she found and dropped them off at a police station. Hazel hires a lawyer, but because of Benjamin’s power and influence, the case against him is eventually dropped. She runs, eventually collecting a fake passport from a hiding spot near the beach and flying to Panama.

The novel concludes with Hazel visiting Lee in the beach restaurant that she owns in Panama. The women talk, and Lee decides to give Hazel a second chance and offers her a job.