The Drowned Man's Daughter

by C.J. Lavigne

Award-winning novelist C.J. Lavigne returns with a strange and startling new vision of the future…


Naia never wanted to be a goddess. But the legend of her as the miracle child of the ocean and a drowned man who washed up on the shore has overtaken her life, forcing her to lie to survive. Desperate to escape from the stalwart adoration of the people she loves, Naia longs to leave the island. But the ocean, filled with deadly mer, and the mainland, filled with noxious moss that drives anyone it touches to madness, block her way on either side.

There’s nowhere for Naia to go. She can’t keep pretending, and soon she is going to be found out…

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 9, 2025

About the author

C. J. Lavigne is a Canadian speculative fiction writer. She is also a professional communications scholar who has, additionally, been a freelance editor, an English teacher, a marketing manager, a tech support supervisor, a barista, and even — briefly — a radio DJ. She grew up in multiple hometowns, but she most often claims Ottawa, Ontario, or Red Deer, Alberta, with a little Nova Scotia thrown in. Wherever she is, she probably has a cat with her, and she’s never terribly far from her next coffee.

Reviews

[Jamedi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review originally on JamReads

The Drowned Man's Daughter is a post-apocalyptic fiction novella, written by C. J. Lavigne, published by NeWest Press. An evocative and compelling tale focused on a group of mismatched characters struggling to survive in a claustrophobic enclave between the sea and invasive moss; a ravaged world that Lavigne uses to create an excellent novella.

Naia, the central character, was washed ashore as a baby, carrying with her the myth of her origin: the rest of the inhabitants believe that she can mediate with the sea, control it, putting her in a leadership role she's not comfortable. She craves to leave the island, but her path is blocked in both directions: the mainland is filled with moss that drives anybody that touches it to madness, and the ocean is full of dangers, an assured sea sentence. As time is passing, Naia must take a decision, as she can't continue pretending as the rest might find out.

Lavigne uses this premise to paint a vivid portrait of the characters; the extreme situation and the sensation of time running out push them towards the edge of the knife, taking decisions that are far from ideal, risking much. We could see this as a study of characters in an isolated place, really well balanced to keep the reader engaged.

The Drowned Man's Daughter is an excellent novella, a fiction piece that uses a particular setting to bring together a great cast of characters while examining aspects like beliefs, hope, and the despair near an almost inevitable end. A brilliant book if you ask me!

[Lorina Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

C.J. Lavigne who, besides being a PhD in communications studies, and holding an MA in English Literature, is an award-winning speculative fiction writer. Her short fiction has appeared in On Spec, Fusion Fragment, Augur Magazine, and PodCastle, and her debut novel, In Veritas (NeWest Press, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Speculative Fiction and the 2021 Crawford Award, as well as being named the 2021 Book Publishers Association of Alberta Speculative Fiction Book of the Year.

The Drowned Man’s Daughter is her second novel.

I have to say when I read the opening paragraph of The Drowned Man’s Daughter, I had that delicious feeling I was going to be pulled into a transportive story, and Lavigne delivered beautifully. Her writing and story-telling ability are top of the game, a novelist capable of creating stories which transcend genre and are just simply excellent literature.

What Lavigne creates in this novel is a dystopian world bordering on fantasy, in which fantasy exists in the hopelessness of hope, in the desperate exigencies of survival. I was minded of Dante’s Inferno: Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

I write that partly as praise for the tension in, and scope of this novel, and partly as caution for sensitive readers. This is not a happy story. This is a story about the brutalities of survival in a catastrophic climate change transformation, cleverly crafted. The characters to which Lavigne gives life are understandable, clearly realized, revealed in an immersive point of view which allows the reader to fully engage. Tension throughout the plot is intense, relentless, driving a reader to turn the page, and the next, and the next.

It’s also a story about being caught in the trap of legend, of becoming legend, of living up to a community’s expectations, knowing all the while you’re going to fail, and fail epically because it’s not just your life at stake, but every single member of your tribe, and you’re just one very ill-equipped girl.

If I have any quibble at all it is that I felt there could have been a few more breadcrumbs offered by way of explanation of how civilization got to this point, and just what were the dangers of the environment, and the creatures of the sea. But that quibble is minor and truly doesn’t significantly affect the story.

It is Lavigne’s ending, however, which is the most brilliant stroke of all. She suddenly breaks point of view and slips into an unreliable narrator who poses a direct question to the reader, challenges that and offers an alternative ending, and then another, and another, all of which are perfect, all of which speak eloquently to the uncertainty not only of the world in which Lavigne’s characters live, but of the uncertainties in our own lives and how a single moment, a single action, can completely change the course of lives. And thus, Lavigne’s The Drowned Man’s Daughter joins the canon of speculative literary fiction inhabited by Canada’s greats.

Very highly recommended.

[Liz Westbrook-Trenholm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling tale of mismatched people struggling for survival in a ravaged world, Drowned Man's Daughter is intensely evocative. Within a huge, hostile landscape, C.J. Lavigne's characters inhabit a claustrophobic enclave at the margin between dangerous seas and invasive moss that drives humans mad, but also is all that allows them to have children. The central character, Naia, washed ashore as a baby, bears the burden of the myth of her origins which the other characters believe, or want to believe, gives her control over the sea, forcing on her a leadership role she feels inadequate to fulfill.
I felt hypnotized by the prose and the pull of the narrative, unable to look away despite my growing sense of doom. This book combines the sensibilities of fantasy and science fiction in a literary envelope. It's far from cozy, but powerful and intriguing to the last, twisting ends.

[Stephanie H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the second book I’ve finished this week where the story and the writing have captivated me, but the ending has left me feeling extremely bleak. This is not a book to read in November, when everything already is bleak.

I don’t understand what the point of any of this was. Did I read almost the entire thing in one sitting? Definitely. This book grabbed me. The writing is great. The CYOA ending is where it lost a star for me.

I have complicated feelings about this complicated book and I don’t know what else to say.