The Night Swimmers

Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places.

Peter Rock's stunning autobiographical novel begins in the '90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin. The narrator, a recent college graduate, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water, navigating the currents and swells carried by the rise and fall of the lake. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears.

Twenty years later, the narrator - now married with two daughters - tries to understand those months, his forgotten obsessions, and dreams. Digging into old notebooks and letters, as well as clippings he's preserved on the "psychic photography" of Ted Serios and scribbled quotations from Rilke and Chekhov, the narrator rebuilds a world he's lost- t hose searching and uncertain drives, his vague wish to be a writer. He also searches for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel and begins once again to swim distances in dark water.

©2019 Peter Rock (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Beautiful and a bit haunting

Absolutely loved this listen—the author captures the area and time in perfect fashion. Knowing the author creates some bias but I enjoyed unraveling mysteries of his life “on the lake”.