Swimming with Ghosts

It's June 2012 at the magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends, Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, looming over their carefully planned pasta parties, tie-dye nights, and pep rallies, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma. Gillian responds by trying to control everyone around her, and Kristy relapses into her dangerous addiction to love. Real sparks fly the night the derecho--a freak land hurricane--sweeps through Northern Virginia, knocking out power for days. The storm sets fire to a tinder box of secrets, leaving Gillian and Kristy alone in the hot dark, their only company their shame. In the vein of Little Fires Everywhere, the characters in Swimming with Ghosts discover that sometimes ashes make the best fertilizer for planting new fields and that they have the power to dodge the history they fear they are doomed to repeat. At times satirical, this book club novel captures the ethos and the ruin of any children's competitive sport or activity where parents work out their demons and in turn lose their way.