The Night Swimmers

The Night Swimmers

Peter Rock

Set in the '90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin, this lyrical autobiographical novel follows the relationship that develops between a recent college graduate and a young widow during their nightly swims in Lake Michigan. Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places. 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 and 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. He also looks for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel, and begins once again to swim distances in dark water.