Longlisted for the 2018 Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging
Authors
"Jessica J. Lee is a writer of rare and exhilarating grace. In
Turning, she sounds the depths of lakes and her own life, never
flinching from darkness, surfacing to fresh understandings of her place
in the welter of natural and human history. A beautiful, moody, bracing
debut." --Kate Harris, award-winning author of Lands of Lost Borders
Through the heat of summer to the frozen depths of winter, Lee traces
her journey swimming through 52 lakes in a single year, swimming through
fear and heartbreak to find her place in the world
*
Jessica J. Lee swims through all four seasons and especially loves the
winter. "I long for the ice. The sharp cut of freezing water on my
feet. The immeasurable black of the lake at its coldest. Swimming then
means cold, and pain, and elation."
At the age of twenty-eight, Jessica, who grew up in Canada and lived in
England, finds herself in Berlin. Alone. Lonely, with lowered spirits
thanks to some family history and a broken heart, she is there,
ostensibly, to write a thesis. And though that is what she does daily,
what increasingly occupies her is swimming. So she makes a decision that
she believes will win her back her confidence and independence: she will
swim fifty-two of the lakes around Berlin, no matter what the weather or
season. She is aware that this particular landscape is not without its
own ghosts and history.
This is the story of a beautiful obsession: of the thrill of a still,
turquoise lake, of cracking the ice before submerging, of floating under
blue skies, of tangled weeds and murkiness, of cool, fresh, spring
swimming--of facing past fears of near-drowning and of breaking
free.
When she completes her year of swimming, Jessica finds she has new
strength,* and she has also found friends and has gained some
understanding of how the landscape both haunts and holds us.
This book is for everyone who loves swimming, who wishes they could push
themselves beyond caution, who understands the deep pleasure of using
the body's strength, who knows what it is to abandon all thought and
float home to the surface.
