{"product_id":"turning-a-year-in-the-water-9780735233287","title":"Turning: A Year in the Water","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the 2018\u003c\/b\u003e Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Jessica J. Lee is a writer of rare and exhilarating grace. In \u003ci\u003eTurning\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 \u003ci\u003eLands of Lost Borders\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough 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\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eJessica J. Lee swims through all four seasons and especially loves the winter. \u003ci\u003e\"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.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e 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\u003ci\u003e--\u003c\/i\u003eof facing past fears of near-drowning and of breaking free. \u003cbr\u003e When she completes her year of swimming, Jessica finds she has new strength\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eand she has also found friends and has gained some understanding of how the landscape both haunts and holds us.\u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJESSICA J. LEE is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author, environmental historian, and winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, the Banff Mountain Book Award, and the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eTurning\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTwo Trees Make a Forest\u003c\/i\u003e, and the children's book \u003ci\u003eA Garden Called Home\u003c\/i\u003e, and co-editor of the essay collection \u003ci\u003eDog Hearted\u003c\/i\u003e. She is the founding editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Willowherb Review \u003c\/i\u003eand teaches creative writing at the University of Cambridge. She lives in Berlin.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books Canada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50372258398482,"sku":"9780735233287","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_e433b2bb-959c-4a57-99f0-93450ec99262.jpg?v=1728544815","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/turning-a-year-in-the-water-9780735233287","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}