Description

Sometimes to be who you really are, you have
to pretend you’re already who you want to be.

At two, Delores’s mother dropped her into the shallow end of a lake, trusting instinct would teach her daughter to swim. From then on, the water is where Delores Walker feels most at home. Now, nearly seventeen, she’s boarding a Greyhound bus leaving the Bronx for sunny Weeki Wachee Springs, a tacky roadside attraction in the shadow of Walt Disney’s new Florida phenomenon.

With a hundred silver dollars left behind by her runaway dad, Delores is chasing her dream of being a mermaid with a group of other aquatic hopefuls—girls just as awkward and uncertain out of water as they are beautiful and graceful in it. And in this make-believe world of sequined tails and amphibious fantasy, Delores will learn some very real lessons about growing up and surviving in a world where everyone sometimes feels like a fish out of water.

A heartfelt novel of coming-of-age no matter what age you are, populated with characters offbeat, outcast, and thoroughly lovable, Swim to Me is filled with the kind of wise magic that’ll have you believing in the impossible before the final page.

About the Author

Betsy Carter is the author of The Orange Blossom Special and her memoir, Nothing to Fall Back On, which was a national bestseller. She is a contributing editor for O, The Oprah Magazine and writes for Good Housekeeping and New York magazine, among others. Carter formerly served as an editor at Esquire, Newsweek, and Harper’s Bazaar, and was the founding editor of New York Woman. She lives in New York City.

Praise for Swim to Me…

“A warm novel…It’s easy to lose yourself in Carter’s cozy, generous story, in which second chances abound and change is almost always for the better.” —Washington Post

"Poignant and at times rollickingly hilarious."—Miami Herald