How to Walk on Water and Other Stories

Author: Rachel Swearingen Publisher: New American Press (2020) How to Walk on Water and Other Stories presents stories that bristle with menace and charm with intimate revelations. An investment banker falls for a self-made artist who turns the rooms of her apartment into eerie art installations. An au pair imagines her mundane life as film noir, endangering the infant in her care. A down-on-his-luck son moves in with his elderly mother and tries to piece together the brutal attack she survived when he was a baby. Swearingen takes us from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Northern Michigan, to Seattle, Venice, and elsewhere. She explores not only what it means to survive in a world marked by violence and uncertainty, but also how to celebrate what is most alive. "Rachel Swearingen is a writer of extraordinary range and talent, wholly sui generis. Her sense of humor is fresh and wonderfully off-kilter, and her understanding of the contradictions of the human heart is profound."   –Christine