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 town's scapegoat, bearing the weight of their grief and fears--is seen as responsible for the tragedy. Kasischke weaves together overlapping narratives and shifting perspectives, gradually peeling back the layers of what really happened that day. Through poetic, sensory-rich prose, she explores the liminal spaces between memory and reality, innocence and culpability, childhood and adulthood. The story probes the arbitrary, inexorable nature of fate--how a single moment can alter lives forever, and how the search for answers can reveal unsettling truths about ourselves and those around us.

Laura Kasischke has published numerous novels and collections of poetry. She has been the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rilke Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. Her work has been widely translated, and three of her novels have been made into feature-length films. She teaches at the University of Michigan, where she is the Theodore Roethke Distinguished University Professor in the Residential College. She resides in Chelsea, Michigan with her husband and son.