Night Swim

The novel opens with a present-day framing device. Sarah Kunitz, now a married folk singer in Los Angeles, receives an email from Mickey Fineburg, her childhood neighbor from Soquaset, Massachusetts. The exchange triggers a flood of memories, and Sarah, who often wakes restless in the small hours, turns off her computer and heads to bed, "returning to the past for answers" (5).

Sarah grows up the second oldest and only daughter of four children in a large clapboard house in Soquaset, a prosperous suburb north of Boston. Her father, Leonard, is a tenured English professor prone to explosive anger. Her mother, Irene, is a former violinist whose days revolve around country club luncheons and a growing dependence on pain pills and Scotch. Tense dinners punctuated by assigned Shakespeare readings and Leonard's volatile outbursts define the household rhythm. Luanne, the family's Black Haitian live-in maid, is one of the few sources of warmth in Sarah's life. When Luanne abruptly quits, Sarah is devastated. A string of replacements follows until Dora arrives, an imposing, blunt Black woman from Florida who runs the house with military efficiency.

Sarah's oldest brother, Peter, is lanky and sardonic, finding refuge in rock music. Robert is prickly and bookish; Elliot, the youngest, is dreamy and emotionally intuitive. Dinner-table confrontations are frequent. When Robert storms away one night, Leonard orders Sarah to bring him back, then slaps Robert across the face, leaving Sarah paralyzed with guilt. Alone afterward, she finds solace in singing and imagining herself on stage.

The family gathers at Aunt Annette and Uncle Max Kline's house for the Passover seder, a ritual holiday meal. During the evening, Max lures Sarah to his basement studio and asks her to pose nude. Sarah refuses and flees. On the drive home, she tells her parents, but Irene dismisses the incident and Leonard rear-ends a police officer's car. At home, the children eavesdrop through speakers Peter has rigged from Leonard's office, overhearing their parents argue. Sarah yanks the wire and retreats with Peter to his attic closet, where he teaches her guitar chords. Singing together, she feels temporarily safe.

Irene's chronic pain worsens until she requires surgery for a herniated spine. The operation succeeds, and Irene channels her renewed energy into a lavish summer party. The evening is full of music and dancing, but after midnight Sarah sees Leonard talking alone in the backyard with Sherry Delgarno, his younger female colleague.

In the dark hours after the party, a police officer finds Irene slumped over her steering wheel at the edge of Gooseneck Lake, her car having gone over an embankment into shallow water. Leonard calls it an accident, but Sarah is furious and unconvinced. Irene returns home after a week, apologetic but distant, and buys a massive Cadillac for protection. The family tacitly agrees never to mention the incident. Shortly afterward, Grandpa Joe, Irene's father, dies of a heart attack at ninety-one.

A brief interlude returns to adult Sarah in Los Angeles preparing for a charity concert, reflecting on where her siblings ended up: Peter teaches music in California, Elliot farms in Vermont, and Robert is a professor at Yale.

The retrospective resumes as Sarah starts high school. She befriends Margaret Lucci, a streetwise Italian girl, and Margaret's cousin Anthony Parelli, a handsome, blue-eyed boy. Walking home one day, a group of girls flicks a cigarette at Sarah and calls her an anti-Semitic slur, her first encounter with such bigotry. At home, Peter shoves Leonard to the floor after Leonard grabs him at dinner, declaring he will no longer tolerate the abuse.

One evening, Irene drives Sarah and Peter to a recital at the New England Conservatory in Boston. She drops them at the entrance and goes to park the car but never arrives. After an agonizing search, Leonard appears and tells them a furniture truck has struck Irene's car. At the hospital, the devastating news emerges: Irene has a concussion and a shattered spinal cord. She dies from her injuries.

The funeral is held five days later. A newspaper article reveals a young driver, unfamiliar with snow, broadsided Irene's Cadillac with a moving truck. During the week of shiva, the Jewish mourning period, the family stays at Aunt Annette's house. Sarah rebuffs condolences, refuses to cry in public, and smokes her first cigarette upstairs with Peter and Kenneth, her older cousin from San Francisco, imitating the way Irene held hers.

Back at school, a Code of Avoidance takes hold: No one mentions Irene's death, and Sarah hides inside the silence. At a football game, the same group of girls harasses Sarah and her friend Sophie, pulling Sarah's hair and hurling slurs. Afterward, Anthony walks both girls home safely. Leonard begins a relationship with Sherry Delgarno, who starts appearing at family dinners and settling into Irene's chair, provoking Sarah and Dora's silent disapproval.

Mr. Edwards, the school music teacher, assigns Sarah the solo in "Aquarius" from the musical Hair and becomes a quiet mentor. At the spring concert, Sarah performs before a packed auditorium and receives a standing ovation. She notices that the girl who harassed her is seated near Anthony, revealing that the bully is his sister and explaining why the harassment stopped. For one evening Sarah feels visible again, though in bed the exhilaration gives way to grief she recognizes as permanent.

Peter secretly leaves for Los Angeles to live with Kenneth. Leonard enrolls Sarah in a rigorous summer program at Stonehill Academy in Concord, where she meets Gregory Brown, a witty boy from New York. Their afternoons of marijuana and sexual exploration in a secluded marsh become her escape from grief. On the final night they have sex for the first time. Sarah falls asleep outdoors and is nearly reported missing. Leonard drives to campus in a rage; Sarah leaps from the moving car before he persuades her back.

The house is now for sale. Sherry solidifies her place in the family through small acts of care, such as rescuing Robert's fish after Leonard accidentally smashes the tank. Sarah confronts Leonard, accusing him of failing to drive Irene the night she died. Learning that Anthony has been drafted, Sarah meets him at Gooseneck Lake, the same lake where Irene crashed. They have sex on the lakeside. She sneaks home past midnight and sees Leonard and Sherry embracing through the office window.

That fall, Sarah discovers she is pregnant, uncertain whether by Gregory or Anthony. Sophie and Sophie's boyfriend fly with Sarah to New York, where abortion is legal, for a procedure at a clinic on Long Island. Dora tends to Sarah during her recovery, revealing that her own daughter went through the same experience, and tells Sarah to be a better friend to herself. Sorting through Irene's belongings for the impending move, Sarah claims her mother's jewelry. The house sells, and the family prepares to relocate to a smaller rental. Sarah returns to school and learns Anthony has left for Vietnam.

In a closing coda, adult Sarah steps onto a stage at a charity fundraiser in West Hollywood. Under the spotlight, she feels Irene's presence urging her on. She sings for her brothers, for Dora, for Leonard, for Anthony Parelli who never came home from Vietnam, and for all the people she has not yet met. Despite the permanent hole left by her mother's death, Sarah affirms her identity through song, declaring that she will sing.