Night Swim

NATIONAL BESTSELLER. Sixteen-year-old Sarah Kunitz lives in a posh, suburban world of 1970 Boston. From the outside, her parents’ lifestyle appears enviable - a world defined by cocktail parties, expensive cars, and live-in maids to care for their children - but inside their five-bedroom house, all is not well for the Kunitz family. Coming home from school, Sarah finds her well-dressed, pill-popping mother lying disheveled on their living room couch. At night, to escape their parents’ arguments, Sarah and her oldest brother, Peter, find solace in music, while her two younger brothers retreat to their rooms and imaginary lives. Any vestige of decorum and stability drains away when a family tragedy occurs one terrible winter day. Soon after, their father, a self-absorbed, bombastic professor, begins an affair with a younger colleague. Sarah, aggrieved, dives into two summer romances that lead to unforeseen consequences. In a story that will make you laugh and cry, Night Swim shows how a family, bound by heartache, learns to love again.

Jessica Keener’s writing career was launched when her story Recovery won second prize in Redbook’s fiction contest. Her work has since been recognized in The Pushcart Prize under Outstanding Writers and has appeared in numerous publications. She is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant and was a finalist for Bread Loaf’s Bakeless Literary Prize. Her debut novel, Night Swim, has was widely praised by reviewers and book bloggers and was followed by the collection Women in Bed and the novel Strangers in Budapest. Her feature articles have appeared in the Boston Globe; O, The Oprah Magazine, Coastal Living, Design New England, and other national publications.