The Summer She Was Under Water

by Jen Michalski

Overview

It has been twenty years since Sam Pinski, a young novelist, has spent the Fourth of July weekend with her family at their cabin on the Susquehanna River. There, she must confront a chaotic history of mental illness, alcoholism, and physical violence, and struggle to find perspective in the pulse of things familiar and respite from the shame of the taboo relationship that courses through her. As she does, a subplot emerges: Excerpts are included from Sam's metaphoric novel in which a pregnant man tries to solve the mystery of his fertility and absolve himself of his past. Then tragedy strikes the Pinskis and they must draw together, tentatively realizing that they will continue to spin off in their own orbits unless they begin the hard work of forgiveness themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945814570
Publisher:	Dzanc Books
Publication date:	11/02/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	520 KB
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Jen Michalski lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She was voted one of the best authors in Maryland by CBS News, one of "50 Women to Watch" by The Baltimore Sun, and "Best Writer" by Baltimore Magazine (Best of Baltimore issue, 2013). She is the author of the novels THE TIDE KING (Black Lawrence Press, 2013; winner of the Big Moose Prize) and THE SUMMER SHE WAS UNDER WATER (Queens Ferry Press, forthcoming August 2016), of two collections of fiction, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (So New, 2007) and FROM HERE (Aqueous Books, 2014), and a collection of novellas, COULD YOU BE WITH HER NOW (Dzanc Books, 2013). She also edited the anthology CITY SAGES: BALTIMORE, which Baltimore Magazine called "Best of Baltimore" in 2010. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww, hosts the monthly reading series Starts Here! in Baltimore, and interviews writers at The Nervous Breakdown.

Editorial Reviews

"The Summer She Was Under Water introduces us to the vivid Pinskis, a family unwilling to be honest about its past and ill-equipped to alter its future. Jen Michalski movingly captures the way mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers jab at and dance around one other, alternately trying to soothe and to wound."
-Pamela Erens, author of Eleven Hours

"Jen Michalski's The Summer She Was Under Water is a marvel of a novel whose dead-on portrayal of working-class American life poses that hard, uncomfortable question we've all asked ourselves: how do we address the wrongs of the past even as we attempt to love and be loved by our families? For Michalski's unforgettable Pinski clan, the danger of trauma is that it's never fully in the past, that it reverberates like an unseen wake on the surface of the river, ready to knock you from your mooring at any moment. In that way, The Summer She Was Under Water doesn't just tell novelist Sam Pinski's story; it tells the story of how each of us, in our own way, wants to grow beyond our perceived limitations and make peace with the people we once were. Put more simply: Jen Michalski is a writerly heavyweight and with The Summer She Was Under Water, we're seeing her at the very top of her game."
-Nate Brown, editor, American Short Fiction

"Over a long weekend, Sam Pinski is confronted with her family's difficult past and her own uncertain future. By turns harrowing and buoyant, Jen Michalski's The Summer She Was Under Water weaves together present-day scenes with memory and even fantasy as Sam tries to reckon with the secret she's kept nearly all her life. There are no easy answers here but instead a family's dysfunction laid bare in all its messiness and heartbreak-and also its moments of occasional, near-accidental grace."
-Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House

"Jen Michalski has an extraordinary gift for revealing all the crooked tributaries that come together to form the ocean of the self. The Summer She Was Under Water brims with heat and longing and secrets, and yet again Michalski has delivered a story that dazzles and devastates."
-Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me

From the Publisher