The Lifeguard

AUTHOR OF BESTSELLER, IN A PERFECT WORLD - AUTHOR OF THREE BOOKS ADAPTED TO FILM: SUSPICIOUS RIVER, THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES, AND WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER IN POETRY FOR SPACE, IN CHAINS - Laura Kasischke dives back into novels with this thrilling small town mystery, THE LIFEGUARD

This is a novel about grief and ambition, innocence and blame--a tale that spools out of and around a Midwestern swimming pool one summer afternoon, 1969, and into the future of an America yet to be imagined.

In the town of Mission Hills, Michigan, an elementary school child drowns in the Olympic-sized pool at a summer swim club. By most, but not all, the lifeguard on duty that afternoon--a teenage girl who becomes the central focus of a town looking for an object onto which their fears and grief can be projected--is seen as responsible for the tragedy. In overlapping narratives, the truth about the drowning gradually surfaces, and the strange arbitrary but inexorable nature of fate is exposed.