THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES

This wonderful coming of age novel about a girl on the brink of adulthood has been compared to the work of J.D. Salinger. It's just as sad, funny and true to life.

It's the summer of 1976 and fourteen-year-old Jamie has a list of worries: what if there's an earthquake? She and her family live in Santa Barbara, after all, a cozy, charmed beach town nestled on the San Andreas fault. What if the police come while her parents are swimming naked or, worse, smoking pot? What if her friends come over while her mother is cooking waffles wearing only cut-off shorts and an apron, her giant, almost-pornographic breasts unbound and free? What if the Native American man her mother brings home from Yosemite steals all the family money? And, most pressing, what if someone dies? Jamie sees death everywhere: in the pool, on the backyard trampoline, even on a blanket on the beach, where a piece of glass could break through and stab her. Indeed, there will be a tragedy that summer, although it's one that Jamie hadn't imagined. Its aftermath will echo in Jamie, changing the tone of everything around her. And by September, when her tan is mahogany, Jamie will discover that the beach isn't always a refuge, sex does not bring forth love, friendship can be as heartbreaking as romance, and her family no matter how crazy, no matter how naked may be her salvation after all.