Criaturita

Kaila lives with her mother in Aguas Claras, one of the towns surrounding Lake Milagro. Since the death of her father—a biologist determined to prove the existence of the creature said to inhabit the lake—Kaila has been trapped in an inescapable grief. She neither sleeps nor eats, and she wakes up drenched in the fresh water of the Milagro. When several women go missing, Kaila joins the search, driven by the desire to prove her father right and to show that whatever dwells beneath those waters is responsible for the disappearances. Seen through the eyes of a girl who has made self-deception her lifeline and who lives trapped in a picture-postcard landscape riddled with illusions, *Criaturita* moves fearlessly between the rural thriller, the coming-of-age novel, and the fantasy genre.