Add Swimming with Ghosts paperback to your summer reading list!
By Contributor David Meisel
RFTW Readers! As we are in the deep end of summer swimming…whether you are an MCSL, NVSL, PWSL or any other league around the DMV, parent, swimmer, or grandparent you know how magical and intense this time of the year is.
Michelle Brafman, has captured the summer swim experience so well in her novel – Swimming with Ghosts! The book came out last June in hardcover, audio, eBook versions . . . and now a year later, this amazing read is available in paperback for those of you who have yet to read it, for those of you who want to read it again, and for those of you who want to send it to a friend whom you suspect needs to relive their glory days of summer swimming! I had the chance to chat with Michelle about on her reflections on publishing Swimming with Ghosts.
David: Michelle, as you think back on the past year…what have been some “Aha” moments from the book since it was released?
Michelle: Over the past year, I’ve had the wonderful chance to connect with all sorts of readers! The “Aha” moments arrive steadily in my exchanges with summer swimmers and parents, specifically the resonance of these little seasons that exists within a sliver of their summers. A former swimmer regaled me with his team’s cheer; a parent lit up while describing a friend he’d met while timing at a B meet. And I was tickled pink when you sent me a 2024 Olympic promotional video where Katie Ledecky mentions her great memories of summer swimming (complete with a clip of young Katie scoring a win for the Palisades Porpoises). Swimming with Ghosts was set in 2012, the summer Katie won her first Olympic gold medal in London. All the summer swimmers in my novel and my real swim club idolized Katie, Michael Phelps, and the rest of the squad.
David: As a mom of 2 amazingly spirited and fast swimmers is there a part of summer swimming you miss now that these two swimmers are swammers?
Michelle: Aaaw. That’s a very sweet thing to say about my kids who are no longer spending their summers at home. Sniffle, sniffle. For fourteen summers straight, though, our entire family bonded over our wholehearted engagement in the season. Both kids swam and coached; I served as a clerk of course and B and A rep, and my husband announced the meets. I miss so many parts of summer swimming. I miss the same-time-next year friendships my husband and I formed with fellow swim parents, and I grow wistful when I run into them at the local Safeway or post office. I miss the kumbaya nature of the graduated relays and the might of those adorable little eight-year-old anchors. I miss watching my kids race and cheer their hearts out and tie-dye their team T-shirts and giggle with their friends over pizza slices and then as coaches, drive around in the middle of the night to plaster their swimmers’ houses with home-made good luck posters. Heck, I even miss that specific pervasive chlorine-mildew aroma of their towels.
David: What else should we know about Swimming with Ghosts?
Michelle: I want new readers to know that the book is about several fictitious swim parents, not so much their kids, during a particular summer when a physical and emotional derecho knocked them off their game, and they in turn behaved very badly. Like, really badly, but they will have to read the book to find out what the characters did. And I want them to know that there is a ton of satire in this novel, the source of which is often my poking fun at my own periodic zaniness. And if you can’t tell by this interview, I heart swim folk and their spawn.
David: What is your favorite word?
Michelle: Chicken.
David: What is your favorite summer beverage?
Michelle: Blue Raspberry Slurpee.
David: What is your favorite summer swim mascot?
Michelle: It’s a tie between the (fictitious) River Run Manta Rays and the (real) Bannockburn Dolphins.
Michelle, thank you for your time today and for bringing this sincerely awesome story of summer team swimming that is now available in paperback to our beach vacations this summer!
Michelle Brafman is the author of Washing the Dead, Bertrand Court: Stories, and Swimming with Ghosts. Her work has appeared in Oprah Daily, O Quarterly, Slate, LitHub, The Forward, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction writing in the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing Program and runs summer college essay workshops for rising high school seniors. A former UC-San Diego NCAA All-American swimmer, Michelle has never lived more than a mile from a body of water. Learn more at michellebrafman.com.
Have a funny anecdote from this summers swim league experience? Please share with us at RFTW!
Michelle’s Book, Swimming With Ghosts can be purchased via the following locations: