The Lifeguard: Stories - Softcover

In the title story, a lifeguard sees his teenage mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In "The Wall," a woman confronts her husband's first marriage, in the form of a mural on a kitchen wall that he is strangely unable to contemplate painting over. In "The Glass-Bottom Boat," a mother on her first trip abroad learns about trust through a solicitous stranger. In "The Snowmaker's Wife," a housewife left alone while her husband works long hours at a mountaintop ski resort starts to suspect his betrayal-as well as her own perceptions. In addition to these stories, which have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Vogue, and other magazines, are two brand-new stories: "Vital Signs" tells of the consequences of a doctor bringing back to life a young woman, half-dead on the side of the road; and "Cross Word" is a wonderfully funny play on those puzzles and the people who do them.

Combining Mary Morris's consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing, The Lifeguard is a powerful and haunting collection.

Mary Morris's books include the novels House Arrest, The Night Sky, Crossroads, and The Waiting Room; the travel memoirs Nothing to Declare and Wall to Wall; and the highly acclaimed story collections Vanishing Animals and Other Stories and The Bus of Dreams. A recipient of the Rome Prize for Literature, she teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.