The Lifeguard

By Laura Kasischke

Book Overview

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. In overlapping narratives, the truth about the drowning gradually surfaces, and the strange arbitrary but inexorable nature of fate is exposed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1636282873
• ISBN13: 9781636282879
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Length: 248 Pages