Fathom, by Sophie Morelli

Poetry, chapbook, 52 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

This collection of poems is based on Lake Placid, New York’s most well-known ghost story. In 1933, the Lady in the Lake, whose real name was Mabel Smith Douglass, took a row boat across Lake Placid and never returned. Thirty years later, almost to the day, local divers discovered her body perfectly preserved one hundred feet below the surface of the water. Her spirit has been known to haunt the famed Pulpit Rock, where her body was found.

These poems are about not only Mabel Smith Douglass's death but also her life, her tumult—about the family that broke apart before her eyes and slowly crumbled like silt to the bottom of the sea—and how she lived through it. Poems about Mabel are interspersed with poems about the author's own struggles with grief, relationships, and her deep, near-obsessive love of the town where she grew up.

There is so much more to this woman’s story than the way that she died. The author hopes you’ll feel closer to Mabel Smith Douglass, the Lady in the Lake, just as she does.

Sophie Morelli is an Adirondacks-based poet holding a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Writing, as well as a Master’s Degree in English Education, both from SUNY Potsdam. She works as content writer for The Pack Labs. She was an Anne Labastille resident in the fall of 2023 and has work featured with Querencia Press and Illuminated Press. She lives in deep devotion to her dog Sherlock.