Drowning lessons

by Peter Selgin

The thirteen stories in DROWNING LESSONS use water in different ways. In “Swimming,” a man’s love affair with a lake threatens his marriage; in “The Wolf House,” a pond is the setting of the reunion—and dissolution—of a group of high school friends, brought together for a funeral. “The Sink-ing Ship Man” chronicles a day in the life of an African American caretaker in charge of the only remaining survivor of the Titanic. In “El Malecón,” a toothless old Dominican man tries to recapture his lost dignity by “borrowing” a shiny convertible Cadillac and driving it along the coastal highway to his childhood village. In “The Sea Cure,” two travelers in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula confront death in the form of a mysterious woman living in an abandoned beach-front apartment complex. In “Our Cups are Bottomless" the accuracy of a legend at the bottom of a diner menu becomes a matter of life or death for a man bent on suicide.